A Chihuahua doctor who was motivated to run for mayor by ongoing criminal violence is in critical condition today after he was shot last night by a lone attacker.

Blas Godínez was working in his clinic in Gómez Farías at 9:30pm when a gunman entered and shot him in the head at close range, his brother said.

He was transferred to a hospital in Cuauhtémoc and later to the city of Chihuahua for surgery.

Godínez won the election for mayor of Gómez Farías, one of the state’s most violent municipalities, on July 1 and was to be sworn in today.

He said in July that the violence and the disappearance of his father, also a doctor, provided strong motivation to contest the mayor’s seat.

Blas Godínez Loya was kidnapped November 8, presumably by a criminal gang, and has not been seen since. Officials suspect he was taken to treat gang members wounded in the gun battles that are part of a bloody turf war between rival gangs.

“What happened to my father marked my life in many ways and one of them was politics,” Godínez Jr. said during the election campaign. It convinced him to “take the radical decision to start working with the people, with my municipality . . . to make Gómez Farías a better place to live,” he said.

Source: El Heraldo (sp), El Pueblo (sp)