The identification of two of three suspects in the assassination of Mexican journalist Miroslava Breach Velducea have been confirmed, said César Augusto Peniche, district attorney general of the state of Chihuahua, according to the Mexican newspaper La Jornada.
Journalist Miroslava Breach Velducea, 54, was killed on the morning of March 23 after receiving at least four shots to the head. The journalist was leaving her home in the capital city of Chihuahua state and getting into her vehicle when a group of strangers approached her and began shooting, according to newspaper Norte in Ciudad Juárez.
Another journalist has been killed in Veracruz, Mexico.
Peruvian journalist and audiovisual producer José Yactayo, who disappeared on Feb. 25, was killed and dismembered, the Peruvian National Police said on March 2 after confirming the identity of human remains found in a rural area on the outskirts of Lima.
A Mexican police reporter who reported having received threats from organized crime was killed in the state of Guerrero on March 2.
After a weeklong hearing, a court in Oaxaca found former police commander Jorge Armando Santiago Martínez guilty of the 2016 murder of journalist Marcos Hernández Bautista, according to a March 4 release from the Oaxaca Attorney General. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison and ordered to pay 178,000 pesos in damages (about $9,077). A motive was not mentioned.
A radio announcer and the director of a radio station in the Dominican Republic were killed on the morning of Feb. 14 in the city of San Pedro de Macorís. According to EFE, an armed man entered the location and began firing several times. However, local media pointed out that there could have been two male attackers.
A Guatemalan congressman was named by the country’s authorities as the alleged mastermind of the March 10, 2015 murder of journalist Danilo Efraín Zapón López, according to the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG for its acronym in Spanish).
Almost 15 years to the day when Colombian journalist Orlando Sierra was fatally shot, another of the men involved in that crime has been deported back to Colombia.
Igor Abisaí Padilla Chávez, a well-known Honduran journalist, was killed in San Pedro Sula on Jan. 17.
Although the number of murders of journalists in the world has dropped from record levels, two Latin American countries are among the deadliest for communicators in 2016, according to the year-end report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Radio reporter Jesus Adrián Rodríguez Samaniego, 41, was killed outside his home in Chihuahua, Mexico on the morning of Dec. 10.