The daughter of slain Mexican journalist Antonio de la Cruz has died from her wounds that resulted from the fatal shooting of her father last week. Cinthya de la Cruz Martinez, 23, succumbed to her injuries on Friday at a hospital in Ciudad Victoria. Expreso, the same newspaper daily where her father Antonio worked, reported that she had suffered a bullet wound to the head.
Martinez was with her father on the day he was gunned down by unknown assailants in front of his home in Tamaulipas. She was inside the vehicle with her father when a man on a motorcycle came riding by and shot at both of them while they were inside their vehicle, ABC News reported. While speculations about his assailants point toward drug cartels, one of de la Cruz’s colleagues, Carlos Manuel Juarez said that the reporter was once told by state authorities to take down some of his posts on Twitter.
“On Twitter, Antonio criticized the state government a lot and criticized the government,” said Juárez. “He even told me at one point that they had asked him to take down some critical tweets that he put up,” he added.
The 47-year-old de la Cruz worked for Expreso for almost 30 years. Expreso’s director, Miguel Dominguez viewed the reporter’s death as a clear attack on the press and the right to freedom of expression. Over the years, the Mexican daily has been targeted based on several incidents that took place in its office building, although the slain reporter has never expressed any concern for his safety. The death of de la Cruz has made him the 12th local journalist killed in the country.
Meanwhile, as Mexico reels from de la Cruz’s tragic death, another Mexican journalist was stabbed on Friday. Susana Mendoza Carreño, the director of a university radio station in the city of Puerto Vallarta, was reported to have suffered stab wounds from an attempted robbery. She was allegedly assaulted by three individuals who seemed intent on stealing her bag and her mobile phone while she was leaving the premises of the radio station. Her attackers stole her vehicle and fled the scene but the vehicle was later recovered by a university student. Carreño was taken to a nearby hospital and is said to be in serious but stable condition after undergoing surgery.
