MIAMI, Florida (March 23, 2017)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today condemned the murder of female journalist Miroslava Breach Velducea in Chihuahua, Mexico, and urged the authorities to carry out a prompt investigation to identify those responsible for the crime, the third such that has been committed this year against a member of the press in that country.
Breach Velducea, 54, was shortly before 8:00 a.m. this morning riding in her pickup truck with her son whom she was taking to school when a person drew up to the driver's window and shot her eight times from a 38 caliber gun. She died as she was being transferred to a hospital, local media reported.
The chairman of the IAPA's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information and editor of La Silla Rota of Mexico City, Mexico, Roberto Rock, expressed his repudiation "of a new crime in Mexico that regrettably could face the same fate as hundreds of similar cases that remain unsolved, this situation being turned into a breeding ground for violence and impunity."
The journalist was correspondent of the newspaper La Jornada for the past 15 years and also worked for the newspapers Norte and El Diario de Chihuahua.
Also murdered in Mexico this year were Ricardo Monluí Cabrera on March 19 in Veracruz and Cecilio Pineda Birto in Guerrero on March 2.
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida.
