CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Gunmen killed the wife and 5-year-old daughter of a state governor's bodyguard in northern Mexico on Tuesday, authorities said.
Brenda Carrillo, 28, and her daughter were gunned down as they left their home in Chihuahua city, the capital of the state by the same name, the state attorney general’s office said in a statement.
Carrillo worked as an investigator for the state attorney general’s office and was married to a bodyguard of Chihuahua Gov. Cesar Duarte. The motive of the shooting was unclear.
Many police and investigators have been assassinated in Chihuahua, a state bordering Texas that has been wracked by a turf war between the Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels.
The mayor of a town in the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon, meanwhile, said he survived an assassination attempt Tuesday — the second attack against him in less than two months.
Garica Mayor Jaime Rodriguez told reporters that his vehicle was ambushed by gunmen in at least 10 cars. He said he was saved because he was riding in an armored vehicle but that two of his bodyguards were wounded when they got out to repel the attack.
Rodriguez escaped unharmed from a similar attack Feb. 25. Three gunmen were killed that day in a shootout with his bodyguards.
Several mayors have been assassinated over the past year in Nuevo Leon and neighboring Tamaulipas state, battlgrounds between the Gulf and Zetas drug gangs.
In the central state of Morelos, meanwhile, prosecutors confirmed that Juan Francisco Sicilia, the son of Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, was among seven people found dead Monday in a car in an exclusive gated community near the picturesque city of Cuernavaca.
Javier Sicilia is known in Mexico for his religious poetry and won a national prize in 2009. Friends of the family gathered in downtown Cuernavaca on Monday night to protest the killings and leave floral offerings.
Police have reported no leads in the killings.
Several mysterious banners were hung around Morelos state Tuesday vowing that the perpetrators would be hunted down and punished. Such banners have been a hallmarks of drug cartels around Mexico.
Violence has spiked in Morelos since the Dec. 2009 death of kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva as splintered groups began fighting for control.
Four men were gunned own inside a home Tuesday in San Marcos, a town in southwestern Guerrero state, another battleground for remnants of the Beltran Leyva cartel, a police report said.
