Veracruz journalist shot dead in home with wife and son
\nPublished on Tuesday 21 June 2011.<\/p>\n
Reporters Without Borders is shocked to learn that Miguel \u00c1ngel L\u00f3pez Velasco, an editor and columnist with the local online daily Notiver, was shot dead along with his wife and his son in their home in the east coast city of Veracruz early yesterday, just seven days after a reporter was found murdered in the northwestern state of Sonora.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe violence against journalists in Mexico never ends,\u201d Reporters Without Borders said. \u201cWe call on the authorities to ensure that L\u00f3pez\u2019s work as a journalist is treated as the most likely motive for his murder and that those responsible are identified and brought to justice as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
L\u00f3pez\u2019s colleagues told Reporters Without Borders that the 55-year-old journalist, his wife and his 21-year-old son were asleep in their home in the northern Veracruz suburb of L\u00f3pez Arias when unidentified armed intruders burst in and shot all three.<\/p>\n
Also known by the pen-name of \u201cMilo Vera,\u201d L\u00f3pez had been working for Notiver for about 20 years, first as a crime reporter and then as a columnist and deputy editor of the crime and local news section. In his column \u201cVa de Nuez,\u201d he wrote about crime, kidnappings, corruption and abuse of authority in the Veracruz area. He had also written about the case of Evaristo Ortega Zarate, a journalist missing since April 2010.<\/p>\n
L\u00f3pez had been threatened. In 2007, drug traffickers left a human head outside the Notiver office with this message (in which L\u00f3pez\u2019s pen-name was misspelled): \u201cWe are leaving you a present here (…) Heads are going to roll. Milovela knows it and many others know it too. These heads are for my dad. Yours truly, A son of Mario S\u00e1nchez and the New People.\u201d …more<\/a><\/p>\n