Federal and Mexico City authorities announced on Monday the arrest in Morelos of a man allegedly connected to the May 2025 murder of two aides of Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada.

Ximena Guzmán, Brugada’s personal secretary, and José Muñoz, an advisor to the mayor, were shot dead on a busy Mexico City avenue on May 20, 2025.

In a joint statement issued on Monday, the federal and Mexico City Security Ministries and the federal and Mexico City Attorney General’s Offices said that Jovany “N” — identified in media reports as Jovany Santa Cruz Molina — was arrested in Yautepec, a municipality in Morelos, about 30 kilometers southeast of state capital Cuernavaca.

The authorities said that the suspect is allegedly a member of a criminal cell linked to the murders of the two Mexico City officials. They said that investigative and intelligence work carried out by federal and Mexico City authorities in coordination with the National Intelligence Center led to the location of Santa Cruz in Yautepec, where he was arrested by federal agents near a market in the center of the municipal seat, called Yautepec de Zaragoza. The suspect was in the possession of a firearm, a bag of unidentified drugs and scales at the time of his arrest.

The federal and Mexico City authorities didn’t identify the criminal group of which Santa Cruz is allegedly a member, but the news outlet Eje Central reported that said group has links to La Unión Tepito, a notorious Mexico City crime gang based in the inner-city neighborhood of Tepito.

The newspaper El Universal reported that investigations link Santa Cruz, known as “La Muñeca” (The Doll), to drug trafficking in northern Mexico City. El Universal wrote that the suspect has been identified as a close collaborator of Samuel Santos Carvajal, aka “El Chamaco” (The Kid), an alleged mastermind of last year’s double homicide.

Last August, Mayor Brugada announced the arrest of 13 people in connection with the murder of Guzmán and Muñoz, but the perpetrator of the crime and the alleged mastermind or masterminds were not among those taken into custody.

On May 20, 2025, security cameras captured a man in a motorcycle helmet shooting the two mayoral aides through the windshield of a vehicle they were traveling in. Authorities haven’t disclosed a motive for the crime, but the media has speculated that the murders were payback for the arrests of criminal leaders in the capital.

Mexico City Attorney General Bertha Alcalde said last August that Guzmán and Muñoz were followed for approximately 20 days before they were murdered. There was “advanced planning sustained over time,” she said.

With reports from Excélsior, El Universal and La Jornada