Journalist Óscar Gómez Agudelo was fatally shot as he entered his office on January 24, 2025, at the community radio station Rumba del Café in the western Colombian city of Armenia. Security camera footage showed Gómez trying to get away as the gunman opened fire. News reports said the shooter escaped on a motorcycle.
The Bogotá-based Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) said Gómez was well known for his morning news program on Rumba del Café that regularly denounced alleged corruption by local government officials as well as the sale of illegal drugs on the streets of Armenia.
FLIP and the Bogotá news magazine Semana reported that Gómez had received threats in connection with his reporting, including a 2023 incident in which a politician in Armenia threatened him with a gun during a meeting. FLIP said Gómez did not report these threats to the authorities because he distrusted them.
Following Gómez’s death, Rumba del Café’s nine remaining journalists sought protection from the Colombian government’s National Protection Unit, according to Semana.
On March 7, Col. Luis Fernando Atuesta, police chief of Quindío department that includes Armenia, said that four suspects — Juan David Prado Ordóñez, Luis Miguel Tamayo Nazareno, Johan Andrés Mena Escobar and Jorge Iván González Botero — had been captured and that they received 10 million Colombian pesos (about US$2,300) for their alleged involvement in killing the journalist.
The Attorney General’s office said on the social platform X that Mena had contacted the other three men to carry out the crime, that Tamayo was the suspected gunman, and that all four men had been charged with aggravated homicide. However, it had no information on the motive for the killing or who ordered it.
Gómez held a seat in the House of Representatives from 2006 to 2020 and ran for mayor of Armenia.