El Diario
November 13, 2008, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
An unidentified assailant shot Rodríguez, 40, a veteran crime reporter for the local daily El Diario, at least eight times with a 9mm weapon, according to Mexican news reports and CPJ interviews. Rodríguez was sitting in a company-owned Nissan sedan parked in his driveway about 8 a.m. when he was shot, local authorities told CPJ. His 8-year-old daughter, Ximena, who was in the car at the time of the attack, was uninjured. According to Jaime Torres Baladez, the mayor's spokesman, the reporter was pronounced dead at the scene.
Pedro Torres, El Diario's deputy editor, said Rodríguez had received a threatening text message in February telling him to "tone it down." Months earlier, the reporter had gotten a death threat by phone, colleagues told CPJ. They said Rodríguez reviewed all his recent news stories but said he could not connect the threats to a specific story. Rocío Gallegos, El Diario news director, told CPJ that Rodríguez turned down her offer of a beat change, saying he wanted to continue covering crime.
Local journalists said Rodríguez told them he had complained of the threats to state Attorney General Patricia González Rodríguez, who directs investigations of state crimes, but was told the state could not protect him. The attorney general's office denied such an exchange had taken place.
In May 2009, state investigators told CPJ that they had identified drug cartel members as suspects in the killing, but federal authorities in charge of the case had not acted on the information. The federal attorney general's office declined comment that month on the status of its probe.
Medium: Print
Job: Print Reporter
Beats Covered: Crime
Gender: Male
Local or Foreign: Local
Freelance: No
Type of Death: Murder
Suspected Source of Fire: Criminal Group
Impunity: Yes
Taken Captive: No
Tortured: No
Threatened: Yes
