A senior officer in the Ciudad Juárez police department saved his family but lost his life in an ambush near his home in Nuevo Casas Grandes, Chihuahua.

Intelligence chief Adrián Matsumoto Dorame was gunned down on his day off in this city located about 200 kilometers southwest of Juárez.

Matsumoto was returning home with his wife and two young children on Sunday afternoon when he noticed two suspicious vehicles about a block away from his house.

Sensing that he was the main target and knowing that the occupants of the vehicles had not yet seen his family inside the car, Matsumoto got out and walked over to the vehicles.

Minutes later he was dead after several gunmen opened fire. At least 50 shells from high-caliber weapons were later found at the scene. Witnesses say that as soon as the gunmen drove off the officer’s family tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate him.

According to the Juárez police department, Matsumoto, 33, had a lengthy law enforcement career in Chihuahua, including leadership roles in state and local police.

Matsumoto had received threats and was the target of narco-banners, and had recently killed a presumed member of a criminal organization during a police operation.

He was neither armed nor wearing any protection at the time of his murder.

Despite the crime scene’s proximity to the attorney general’s offices and a Federal Police station, officers were not dispatched to the scene of the shooting or to pursue the killers, according to the newspaper El Universal.

On Monday, the attorney general’s office reported that investigators had raided a safe house belonging to a criminal organization, killing one man and capturing another, and seized several high-caliber weapons.

Attorney General Jorge Nava explained that according to preliminary investigations the two men might be linked to the murder of Matsumoto.

Source: El Universal (sp)