The PRI candidate for deputy for the Mexican state of Coahuila, Fernando Purón Johnston, was shot to death last night in an election debate in Piedras Negras, the government of the northern Mexican state of Coahuila reported today.
Purón, of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), was shot in the head when they left the Autonomous University of Coahuila de Piedras Negras last night, where they participated in an electoral debate, the State Attorney General’s Office said.
The Coahuila Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that the investigation of the murder has been initiated and samples of the crime scene have been taken in addition to interviews with the witnesses.
“We are working and for the time being we have the investigation,” said the head of the Prosecutor’s Office of Coahuila, Gerardo Márquez Guevara, at a press conference in Piedras Negras.
The governor of Coahuila, Miguel Ángel Riquelme, the PRI candidate for the Presidency of Mexico, José Antonio Meade, and the leader of these parties, René Juárez, expressed their condemnation and their repudiation for the murder of Purón.
“I want to express my condemnation and repudiation for the artful attack that cost this life Friday night”, said the governor in an official statement.
Meade expressed in his official account of Twitter’s social network his “absolute repudiation” of the murder and demanded that the authorities investigate “this unacceptable fact to its ultimate consequences.”
“We strongly repudiate the devious crime of our candidate for Federal Deputy in the State of Coahuila, Fernando Purón,” the national leader of the PRI, René Juárez Cisneros, said in his Twitter account.
With the murder of Purón, the number of politicians assassinated was increased to 104 since the beginning of the current electoral process in September 2017, which will culminate with the July 1 ballot by the President of Mexico and another 3,400 public officials.
According to the Political Violence Report in Mexico 2018 of the Etellekt consultancy, since the beginning of the electoral process last September there have been 177 attacks against politicians throughout the country, including 103 murders.
Among the murdered who aspired to electoral posts there are candidates, mayors, mayors, ex-alcaldes, regidores, militants, partisan leaders, exregidores, deputies, syndics and ex-syndics.
