Two suspects were killed and three have been detained following the death of Gisela Mota, killed a day after taking office as mayor of Temixco

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The governor of the Mexican state in which a mayor was shot dead a day after taking office has vowed he will “not relent” in bringing her killers to justice.

Graco Ramírez, governor of Morelos state, blamed “criminals” for the killing of the Temixco mayor, Gisela Mota. He did not say which cartel or gang might be responsible.

Mota, 33, was murdered on Saturday morning when four suspects attacked her home, the state security commissioner, Jesús Alberto Capella, said. Two suspects were killed and three others detained after they fired on police and soldiers from a van, he added.

Capella said police found a 9mm gun, an Uzi, ski masks and an SUV with Mexico state license plates.

At a press conference, Morelos’s attorney general, Javier Pérez Durón, gave few details of the suspects’ identities, only saying they had been linked to other crimes. Capella later told the Mexican daily Excélsior the detained suspects include two teenagers, aged 17 and 18, and a 32-year-old woman.

On Sunday, Ramírez set the Mexican flag to half-staff and declared three days of mourning.

“The presumed authors of the attack have been detained,” he wrote on Twitter, “with all legality and resolve necessary. We will not return to how things were before. There will be no impunity.”

As reported by the Associated Press, Ramón Castro Castro, the Roman Catholic bishop of Cuernavaca, celebrated mass at Mota’s home on Sunday and later spoke critically of a state where some areas are in the control of organized crime.

“One theory could be that it was a warning to the other mayors,” Castro said to reporters, according to the AP. “If you don’t cooperate with organized crime, look at what will happen to you. It’s to scare them.”

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Cartels and gangs have for decades targeted officials in towns and cities where they have sought control, as corruption among leaders and police has plagued Mexican states. In 2014, more than 40 students were kidnapped in Guerrero. They remain missing, the investigation into their disappearance and presumed deaths fraught with allegations of neglect, mismanagement and criminal conduct.

Last year, the mayor-elect of Jerecuaro was shot dead by gunmen at a bus station, and a mayoral candidate in Guerrero was found decapitated. A threat to others was scrawled on a sheet over her body.

About 100,000 people live in Temixco, about 60 miles south of Mexico City and near Cuernavaca, the state capital, where gangs regularly stage kidnappings. A 2015 study by the Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice found Cuernavaca had replaced Acapulco as the most violent city in Mexico.

The agency that coordinates state and local police forces has its headquarters in Temixco. Federal and state security forces have been deployed in Cuernavaca and cities along the border with Guerrero, meanwhile, in an operation called “Delta”.

On Twitter, Graco Ramírez remembered Mota as his “young and dear friend”. “This was a challenge by organized crime,” he wrote. “We will not relent.”

Mota was sworn into office on New Year’s Day. She served in Mexico’s national congress from 2012 to 2015, as secretary of youth subjects and secretary of democratic education within the leftist Democratic Revolution party.

The party’s president, Augustín Basave, released a statement condemning the attack and praising the mayor.

“Gisela Mota was a strong and brave woman,” Basave said. “She declared that her fight against crime would be direct and head-on.”