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
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.