A mayor-elect was assassinated on a bus in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco early Monday morning.
Retired Navy captain Salvador Villalba, 53, was returning from a meeting with military officials in Mexico City when gunmen intercepted the bus, the Guerrero State Attorney General’s Office said.
Milenio news outlet reported that three assailants pulled the driver out of the bus and assaulted him.
Two of the suspects then entered the vehicle and went seat by seat searching for Villalba until they were able to match him with a photo they had of him on a smart phone before shooting him four times.
A woman who was on the bus was also struck by the gunfire and rushed to a local hospital, where she is recovering and in stable condition.
Salvador Villalba, mayor-elect of the southern Mexican municipality of Copala, was assassinated aboard a bus in the resort town of Acapulco on Monday. The retired Navy captain was 53 years old
Milenio news network reported that the gunmen entered the bus and searched each seat, comparing the passengers with a photo on a smart phone before they located mayor-elect Salvador Villalba and shot him four times
At least 34 political candidates were murdered leading up to the June 2 elections in Mexico, according to human rights organization Data Civica. However, the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador only registered 23 homicides.
Villalba decided to seek office after his friend, Jesús González, leader of the Ecological Green Party of Mexico, was murdered in June 2023 after he came forward with accusations that Mayor Guadalupe García, Villalba’s cousin, had threatened him with violence if he did not clear the way for her preferred public office candidates.
Milenio news outlet reported that Villalba was offered money to drop out of the race at the beginning of his campaign, but declined to do so.
He ran under the Mexico Advances Movement party and beat out Morena candidate José Chávez, obtaining 39 percent of the vote.
Villalba had two federal police officers assigned to his security detail, but the protection was only valid while traveling inside the state of Guerrero.
The Guerrero State Attorney General’s Office said the gunmen intercepted the bus that mayor-elect and retired Navy captain Salvador Villalba was traveling on after attending a meeting with military officials in Mexico City and shot him dead
Salvador Villalba, the mayor-elect of the southern Mexico town of Copala, poses with his dad in a photo, one of many he shared on Facebook on Sunday to celebrate Father’s Day
Retired Navy captain Salvador Villalba was offered money to cut his campaign short, but declined to do so and then was elected mayor of the southern Mexico town of Copala
On Sunday, the Copala mayor-elect took to Facebook to share a series of pictures and videos of him and his dad to commemorate Father’s Day.
His last post thanked supporters for electing him as mayor.
‘The people accompany me and I will not fail them,’ he declared.
His brother, Jesús Villalba, called on President López Obrador to ensure that the attackers are arrested and prosecuted.
‘We don’t know how it happened, how everything was handled so that my brother’s life was taken,’ Jesús Villalba told local news outlet Prensa Libre de la Costa. ‘He was a person who had a goal and thank God he achieved it, he won, I don’t understand why deprive him of his life.
‘If he was going to work well or poorly, they should have let him, but they should not have taken his life.’
