Luis Carlos Santiago

Santiago, 21, a photographer
with the local daily El Diario, and
intern Carlos Sánchez Colunga, 18, were shot by unidentified gunmen in the
parking lot of a shopping mall in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, according to news accounts. Santiago died at the
scene of the 2:45 p.m. shooting. Sánchez was hospitalized with serious
injuries.

The two were using a car that belonged to lawyer and human
rights activist Gustavo de la Rosa, who lived in the United
States, said a spokesman for the Chihuahua state prosecutor’s office. El Diario reported that Santiago and Sánchez had borrowed the car
from de la Rosa’s son, an editor at the paper, to attend a photography workshop
at the mall. Officials were investigating whether de la Rosa was the intended
target, the prosecutor’s spokesman said.

Santiago
was the second El Diario journalist
killed in as many years, CPJ research shows. A day after Santiago‘s death, the paper published an
unusual, widely covered editorial. Addressing the cartels directly, it said El Diario would willingly compromise its
news coverage in order to preserve its reporters’ lives.