A former governor of Mexico’s violence-ridden western state of Jalisco has been shot dead in a restaurant bathroom at a popular beach resort in Puerto Vallarta.
At around 1.40am on Friday, he got up from the table and went to the toilet, where the killer shot him in the back, state attorney general Gerado Octavio Sol said.
Sandowal did not die immediately, but when his bodyguards tried to get him out of the restaurant, his escape was blocked by more gunmen on the street outside, who opened fire, seriously injuring a bodyguard. The former governor died immediately at a local hospital.
Sandoval was assigned 15 police bodyguards, but only two were with him during the attack.
According to Solis, staff at the restaurant cleaned up crime scenes, removed blood and bullet casings and erased video of the attack. “There’s no sign – they’re practically clearing the place,” Solis told Televisa. He said eight to 10 suspects were involved in the attack, but did not specify who was responsible.
The President of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, expressed his condolences and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice.
But López Obrador, also known as Amlo, said the investigation was the responsibility of state prosecutors. In general, high-profile crimes, possibly associated with a drug cartel, are prosecuted by a federal attorney.
Sandowal was a rising star of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI, whose tenure as governor was overshadowed by the rise of the extremely violent Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
He recently resigned from the party’s executive committee, saying the PRI – which lost Amolo in a landslide in 2018 – had failed to acknowledge its mistakes and was guilty of clienteleism. Analysts said the shameless killings led to more violence ahead of next year’s regional elections.
The current governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alforo, called it a “direct attack”, indicating that the killer knew who he was targeting and that he was only interested in assassinating the former governor.
In just a few years, CJNG has established a reputation as one of the fastest growing and most aggressive criminal groups in the country, ready to face rivals in both the underworld and federal forces.
Jalisco and the neighboring state of Colima CNJG. And between the rival Sinaloa cartels, the once-captured Capo Jock “n” Al Chapo “Guzman has become the subject of a fierce battle.
The most shocking episode of that conflict took place in Puerto Vallarta in 2016, when Guzman’s son Jesસs Alfredo Guzm નn and five other men were abducted from a restaurant in the city. His captors, believed to be from CNJ, immediately released him.
During the first week in Sandoval’s office, suspected CJNG gunmen killed his tourism minister in Guadalajara, the state capital of Jalisco.
The same group was blamed for trying to assassinate a former state prosecutor in a one-day elite attack on a Japanese restaurant in the city in 2018, in a gun battle that left 15 people injured.
