Mexican musician decapitated, wife and son killed

Posted by DD Republished from  Yahoo News

Oaxaca (Mexico) (AFP) - Gunmen burst into a musician's home in southern Mexico before dawn on Thursday, decapitated him and killed his wife and son, police said.

The armed group entered the family's home in Juchitan, Oaxaca state, at 2:30 am and killed Victor Sanchez, 40, the singer of the tropical band Sensacion Caribu, the police said in a statement.

His wife and 11-year-old son were gunned down.

It was the second slaughter of a family this week in Oaxaca, a state that has been relatively spared of the drug violence afflicting other regions of Mexico.

The state prosecutor's office issued a separate statement saying that shots had been fired at Sanchez's house a few months ago and that a note threatening him with death was left behind at the time.

Authorities are investigating whether the murders are linked to a dispute between rival criminal gangs.

In the previous massacre on Monday, eight shark fishermen from the same family were killed in Puerto Escondido, a beach resort famous among surfers.

Authorities said they were investigating whether the fishermen were involved in illegal activities at sea.  Officials did not specify what type of activities, but drugs are shipped along Mexico's Pacific coast.

Elsewhere in Mexico on Thursday, authorities found six bodies on a path in the eastern state of Veracruz.

The victims included a police officer who had been missing since Saturday, three other men and two women, authorities said.

Also in Veracruz, a 45-year-old journalist, Pedro Tamayo Rosas, was gunned down in front of his wife and two children late Wednesday.
 

Pedro Tamayo Rosas falleció en el Centro Médico Regional. Photo El Sol de Cordoba

 DD;  An editorial in the newspaper he worked for, El Pinero de la Cuenca, said Tamayo "documented the acts of violence and social protest in his hometown," as well as reporting extensively on crime. 

Vice News reported that Tamayo had received death threats for his reporting in an area controlled by the Zetas drug cartel, known as Tierra Blanca. He initially fled to Oaxaca, but returned when the Veracruz authorities promised to investigate his case and provide him with police protection. But that did not stop attacker from shooting him eight times.

n June 2014 Tamayo covered the finding and exhumation of 35 bodies in clandestine graves located in the Tres Valles municipality, reported AFP. The victims were allegedly killed by the Zetas cartel.

Tamayo is the 19th journalist killed since 2010 in Veracruz.(DD; other media sources citing the organization Article 19 say the number is 17 with others disappeared)

Veracruz turned particularly deadly after Governor Javier Duarte took office in 2010. The governor has been linked to a series of corruption scandals and been accused of having connections to organized crime.

The website DW  reported that the Mexican government on Thursday reported that the rate of homicides had risen by 15.4 percent in the first half of 2016, compared with the last six months of 2015.