Marco Ernesto Islas Flores, 31, son of communicator Marco Antonio Islas Parra, was shot to death this Sunday outside his home, according to what his father reported through social networks.
Islas Flores was also the nephew of journalist Víctor Islas Parra, former director of the newspaper El Mexicano and author of an opinion column in Mexicali, Baja California.
The victim's father manages a Facebook page, Zona Norte Noticias, where he only publishes the opinion columns of his brother,
El Búfalo
Islas Parra, press releases from the Prosecutor's Office and in some cases personal opinions, reported the Punto Norte newspaper.
He was also a reporter since 1990 for El Heraldo, El Sol de Tijuana and El Imparcial.
[“They are annihilating journalism”: Mexican reporters work between attacks and murders]
Marcos Ernesto Islas Flores, 31, a homicide victim in Tijuana, Baja California. Millennium
The crime occurs just two weeks after journalist Lourdes Maldonado López was murdered in Tijuana and less than a month after photojournalist Margarito Martínez Esquivel was murdered in that same city.
Islas Flores himself had worked as a communicator until just over a year ago, according to his father in an interview with the newspaper Reforma.
"He was a communicator for a while, a year and a half ago he retired, he was outraged by many things and preferred to walk away
," said the father.
According to Islas Parra, her son was ambushed by two armed people outside the house where they both lived in the Lomas Verdes neighborhood, around 6:00 am local time.
"He described how he was going to die," says a journalist about the murder of her colleague in Mexico
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Four shots were heard and then the two subjects took off running, the father said.
The authorities announced that one of the suspects, Jocssar Fidel, 25, originally from Tlaxcala, was arrested this Sunday afternoon.
Among the detainee's belongings they
found a cardboard with an alleged message from the drug trafficker with threats
, signed with initials and nicknames of people linked to criminal groups, Punto Norte reported.
"Outside the home where they killed my son Marcos Ernesto Islas Flores with four bullets, they left lying a supposed narco banner whose message I do not know but it has to do with the arrival of the new administration," Islas Parra wrote.
The victim's father said he was aware of the cardboard's existence, although he did not know its contents.
"They already cheated a lot."
López Obrador attacks the press and attacks the journalist Carmen Aristegui
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The State Attorney General's Office, which is already investigating the case, has not yet indicated whether it believes the murder was related to the past journalistic activity of the victim or his father and uncle.
[They kill a Mexican journalist in Tijuana: it is the second murdered in a week and the third in 2022]
However, the recent murders of journalists, most of which have not been solved, show the serious crisis faced by communicators to practice their profession in Mexico and the inability of the authorities to protect them.
So far this year alone, four reporters have been murdered in the country, the two mentioned in Tijuana, as well as one in Veracruz, José Luis Gamboa, and another in Michoacán, Roberto Toledo.
A woman places photos of dead reporters during a national protest over the murder of Lourdes Maldonado and freelance photographer Margarito Martínez, in Mexico City, on January 25, 2022. Eduardo Verdugo / AP
In total, 149 communicators have been murdered in Mexico for their work from 2000 to date, of which 28 died during the López Obrador government, which began in December 2018.
The events of this Sunday also highlight the crisis of violence in Tijuana, which borders San Diego, California.
On the Mexican side of the border, more than 150 people have been killed so far this year, according to official sources.