At least 4 people involved in killing of Mexico City mayor’s senior aides, police say

MEXICO CITY (AP) — At least four people were involved in the killing of the personal secretary and a close adviser of Mexico City ’s Mayor Clara Brugada, the capital’s police chief said Wednesday, as more details emerged of the worst attack against public officials in the capital in recent years.

Pablo Vázquez Camacho said investigators had identified and found a motorcycle and two other vehicles used in the escape of the gunman who killed the two officials Tuesday morning as they traveled in a vehicle along a busy thoroughfare.

Brugada’s personal secretary, Ximena Guzmán, and an adviser, José Muñoz, were shot dead in Guzmán’s car, authorities said.

Mexico City chief prosecutor Bertha Alcalde Luján said the gunman had fled on a motorcycle that was hidden nearby and then changed vehicles twice as he and others fled into neighboring Mexico State.

Clothes were recovered in the vehicles and were being analyzed, but investigators could not yet offer a possible motive, the prosecutor said.

She said Guzmán was shot eight times and Muñoz four times.

Alcalde said that given the circumstances, investigators believe “it was a direct attack and with an important degree of planning and those who killed them had previous experience.”

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Still, she said investigators could not yet propose a motive or say who was behind the killings.

“We cannot conclude that this is tied to organized crime, much less speak now of a particular organized crime group,” Alcalde said.

Both officials said Wednesday that investigators had detected the presence of an individual at the site of the attacks days before they occurred, which would suggest knowledge of the victims’ routines.

The attack, which happened at around 7 a.m., left four bullet holes clustered on the driver’s side of the windshield. One body lay on the pavement.

Vázquez Camacho said that neither Guzmán nor Muñoz had any special security measures, but both had received training about protecting themselves.

“They are people who worked very closely with the people ... and they did their work without fear,” he said.

President Claudia Sheinbaum, who is an ally of Brugada and a former mayor of Mexico City before winning the presidency last year, had declined to speculate on the possible involvement of organized crime during her press briefing earlier Wednesday.

At the scene of the attack Wednesday morning, hundreds of commuters passed with most oblivious to what had occurred a day earlier. Some, however, noticed the handwritten signs with messages of remembrance to the two victims and flowers and candles left on the sidewalk.

University student Loretta García Oriz said she had passed the site Tuesday when Guzmán and Muñoz’s bodies were still at the scene. “Passing here gives me the same trauma,” she said Wednesday.

Oscar Sánchez’s taco stand isn’t far from the crime scene, but said Wednesday he didn’t know what had happened until another vendor told him and police began to set up a perimeter. The attack showed that it doesn’t matter if you’re an official or an average person, he said. “It’s all the same.”

Mexico City’s mayor is considered second in political importance only to the president. The mayor’s office has long been a stepping stone to the presidency, something true for Sheinbaum and her predecessor.

But for years, the idea has prevailed of Mexico City as a relatively peaceful oasis protected from the brutal drug cartel violence prevalent in other parts of the country. There has always been street crime, but the cartels, while present, maintained a lower profile in the capital.

That illusion was partially dashed in 2020 with the brazen ambush of Mexico City’s then police chief on another central boulevard. Omar García Harfuch was wounded, but two bodyguards and a bystander were killed in the attack involving more than 20 people and heavy weaponry.

García Harfuch immediately blamed the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

There had not been another such attack on public officials in the capital since then.