PRI Candidate Wounded in Mexico Attack, Husband Dies

Bordeland Beat

The candidate for a local legislative seat in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, Rosalia Palma, was wounded on Saturday in an attack that took her husband’s life, officials at the state Attorney General’s Office said.

The incident occurred near Palma’s district of Teposcolula – she is one of the candidates in the July 7 elections to represent the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Pary, or PRI, in the Oaxaca state legislature.

 

“Her husband, Efrain Cruz, died in the attack... she was wounded and taken to a hospital in this capital (Oaxaca),” Mayra Ricarde, spokeswoman for the state AG’s office, said.

The woman was apparently riding in an SUV with her husband and a niece through the Oaxaca region when they were attacked by unidentified gunmen.

The candidate’s husband died at the scene of the attack, a place on the highway where the SUV had to slow down because of a “geological fault,” while she was hospitalized, Ricarde said.

“We still don’t know (Palma’s) state of health, nor where the bullet hit her,” the spokeswoman said.

Local media said the niece who was traveling with the candidate and her husband was also wounded.

Saturday’s incident was the latest of several acts of violence during the electoral campaign, following the June 12 slaying of Jaime Orozco Madrigal, the PRI’s candidate for mayor of the town of Guadalupe y Calvo, and the kidnap-murder of the leader of the Oaxaca state branch of Mexico’s leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, Nicolas Merino, who was found dead two days ago.

Source: The Associated Press