Miguel Angel Villagómez Valle

La Noticia de Michoacán

October 10, 2008, in between Lázaro Cárdenas and Zihuatanejo, Mexico

Police found Villagómez’s body, bruised and riddled with gunshot wounds, in a garbage dump near a coastal highway between the towns of Lázaro Cárdenas, where he edited the regional newspaper La Noticia de Michoacán, and Zihuatanejo, where he lived with his wife and three children.

Villagómez, 29, had last been seen the night before, when he left his newsroom in Lázaro Cárdenas, a port city on the southern Pacific coast of Michoacán, around 10:30 p.m. and dropped two colleagues off at their homes, law enforcement officials and journalists told CPJ.

Villagómez’s wife, Irania Iveth Leyva Faustino, told CPJ that her husband had received recent phone threats from callers identifying themselves as members of the Zetas criminal group. Villagómez’s paper regularly covered crime, including cartel activities. Authorities did not disclose any arrests or other information on the case.

Motive Unconfirmed: CPJ is investigating to determine whether the death was work-related.