Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, one of the few candidates to allege links between organized crime and government officials in Ecuador, campaigning against corruption and gangs, has been fatally shot while leaving a political rally in Quito, Ecuador.
A criminal gang called Los Lobos has claimed responsibility. Los Lobos is the second-largest gang in Ecuador with around 8,000 members – of whom are behind bars.
The gang has been involved in a number of recent deadly prison fights, in which many inmates have been brutally killed.
A break-away faction from the Los Choneros gang, Los Lobos is believed to have links to the Mexico-based Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), for which it traffics cocaine. Suspicion for the murder had first fallen on Los Choneros, which had threatened Villavicencio and his team just last week. However, Los Lobos claimed responsibility in a video in which gang members wearing balaclavas flashed gang signs and waved their weapons.
Last month, the mayor of the city of Manta was shot dead, while in February, a candidate for mayor in the city of Puerto López was killed.
Ecuador, the smallest of the Andean nations in South America, wedged between Colombia and Peru, has historically been a relatively peaceful country, but crime has shot up in recent years, fuelled by the growing presence of Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, which have infiltrated local criminal gangs, says the BBC. The cartels use Ecuador, which has a good infrastructure and large ports, to smuggle cocaine produced in neighbouring Colombia and Peru to the US and Europe.
Villavicencio’s uncle, Galo Valencia, described the moment his nephew was killed: „We were just a few metres from the school when we were hit by a hail of about 40 bullets”. Valencia said his nephew had been hit by three bullets in the head.
Video from inside the building shows panicked supporters diving for cover. In the chaos, Nine other people were injured – including a candidate for the country’s assembly and two police officers, prosecutors said. The suspect was also shot in an exchange of bullets with security and later died from his injuries, the country’s attorney general said on social media.
A state of emergency has been declared and current President Guillermo Lasso has vowed the „crime will not go unpunished”.
Fernando Villavicencio, a serving congressman and former journalist, condemned what he said was the lenient approach to the gangs, saying that were he to come to power, there would be a crackdown. He was married and leaves behind five children.
