A reporter was murdered in Celaya, Guanajuato, on Sunday while under police protection, becoming the third journalist to have been killed in Mexico so far this year.

Alejandro Martínez Noguez, a crime reporter known as “El Hijo del Llanero Solitito” (The Son of the Lone Ranger), was shot in the head and body while in the back seat of a municipal police vehicle. He succumbed to his injuries in hospital.

Two bodyguards were also injured in the attack, which occurred on a stretch of Federal Highway 45 between Villagrán and Celaya. Gunmen shot at the 57-year-old journalist and the police officers tasked with protecting him from another vehicle. A woman traveling in another vehicle with her husband also sustained a bullet wound and was taken to hospital for treatment.

Martínez’s bodyguards reportedly returned fire, but apparently didn’t injure the aggressors.

The Guanajuato Attorney General’s Office said in a social media post on Sunday afternoon that an investigation into the murder was underway. No arrests were reported.

Prior to the attack, Martínez reported on the death of a pedestrian who was hit by a car on a section of highway in Villagrán. He live-streamed his report from the scene of the accident on his Facebook page, which has 345,000 followers.

Martínez signed off with the following remarks:

“I’ll leave you here friends. Thank you for the great favor of your attention and for putting up with the nonsense I say. … As I always ask you, eat fruit and vegetables and remember my passion is gossip. See you soon.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based non-governmental organization, condemned the killing of Martínez in an article posted to its website.

“Mexican authorities must act immediately to find and arrest the killers of Alejandro Martínez Noguez, whose death underscores the dangers journalists face in the city of Celaya and its environs,” said CPJ Mexico Representative Jan-Albert Hootsen.

“His shooting while under police protection is a shocking example of the dangers facing journalists trying to keep the Mexican public informed about what is happening in their country.”

CPJ and Amnesty International said in March that “eight journalists have been killed while enrolled in Mexico’s Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists in the last seven years, a figure that highlights the urgent need to strengthen and reform the institution.”

Martínez survived an attempt on his life in 2022

Martínez was targeted in an armed attack outside his Celaya home on Nov. 29, 2022, but survived. He subsequently accepted an offer of police protection from Celaya Mayor Javier Mendoza Márquez.

Guanajuato Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo said that Martínez specifically asked to be protected by traffic police officers, explaining that he “trusted” that unit of the Celaya municipal police force.

In light of his murder, he said he had asked his government secretary Jesús Oviedo to review the effectiveness of protection protocols provided to journalists, and to look at how state authorities can better protect those who face threats related to their work.

At least four reporters have been murdered in Guanajuato — Mexico’s most violent state in terms of total homicides — since Rodríguez took office in September 2018.

The El Universal newspaper reported that Martínez — who worked as a journalist for more than three decades — sometimes wore a jacket emblazoned with the words, “No dispares, soy periodista,” or “Don’t shoot, I’m a journalist.”

Celaya is a notoriously violent city 

There were 351 homicides in Celaya during the 12 months to the end of June, according to the crime statistics website elcri.men. That made Celaya the 40th most violent municipality based on per-capita murders over the past year.

Gisela Gaytán, selected as the Morena party’s candidate for the June 2 mayoral election in Celaya, was murdered in April. Gaytán didn’t have government protection even though she asked for it.

The Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel are involved in a long-running turf war in Guanajuato that has led to increase violence in various municipalities including Celaya.

There were shootouts and narco-blockades in the city in January following the arrest of three suspected members of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. Last December, five young men were found dead inside an abandoned car in a Celaya neighborhood.

Twenty-one police officers were killed in the municipality in 2023, according to the organization Causa en Común, and at least 18 more have been murdered so far this year.

Feds say 3 journalists have been killed in Mexico this year 

Deputy Security Minister Luis Rodríguez Bucio told President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Tuesday morning press conference that Martínez was the third journalist to have been murdered in Mexico in 2024.

Víctor Culebro, director of the news website Realidades, was found dead in Chiapas in late June, while Roberto Carlos Figueroa, a journalist in Morelos, was kidnapped and killed in late April.

The body of another journalist, Víctor Manuel Jiménez Campos, was found in Villagrán, Guanajuato, in June. The last time he was seen alive was at a baseball game in Celaya in November 2020. The federal government is apparently not counting his death among the murders of journalists in 2024.

Since López Obrador took office in December 2018, 47 journalists have been murdered in Mexico, according to press freedom advocacy organization Article 19.

Before the June 2 presidential election, now President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum signed a letter prepared by Reporters Without Borders in which she pledged to “guarantee the full protection of journalists” and “fight against impunity” in crimes committed against them.

López Obrador, a frequent critic of the press, has been accused by Article 19 of using “stigmatizing discourse” against the media that heightens the risks journalists face in their work and which could “even generate attacks.”

With reports from El Universal, El País, El Financiero, Expansión and Reforma