Two days after the sons of two Mexican journalists were shot dead in Chihuahua City, the state's governor, César Duarte announced that the motive for the crime was a drug debt of $825, according to the newspaper El País.
The organization Article 19, however, demanded that the state Attorney General present evidence to support this claim, reported El Informador.
"The killing of Alfredo and Diego Páramo makes me think that the Mexican state, instead of protecting its youth, spies on and criminalizes them," wrote the columnist Ciro Gómez Leyva in the newspaper Milenio.
The parents of the slain men are journalists Martha González Nicholson, editor of the local crime newspaper El Peso, and the renowned economics journalist David Páramo, who contributes to national radio, print and television.
"I don't want them called thugs, they should investigate this well," said González during the funeral. Páramo tweeted, "The job or standing of the parents makes no difference in the profound lose of your beloved sons."
The spokesperson for the Chihuahua State Attorney General, Carlos González, told the Spanish newspaper El País that the home where the young men lived with their mother had been shot at two years ago for reasons related to the parents' profession.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto expressed his condolences to the journalists and demanded the case be solved. A day after the crime, authorities announced the arrest of a suspect, according to the magazine Proceso.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
