CIUDAD VICTORIA, Tamaulipas — Authorities arrested one of the men reportedly tied to the murder of a journalist in this border city. In 2018, Breitbart Texas currently documents 13 cases of unsolved murders targeting journalists.
According to information released by Irving Barrios Mujica, the Tamaulipas Attorney General, authorities arrested a man publicly identified Omar Zuriel “N” for his alleged role in the murder of journalist Hector Gonzalez Antonio.
The motive is being hailed as a robbery, however, the state of Tamaulipas is seeing a dramatic spike in cartel violence tied to territorial disputes.
In late May, authorities discovered Gonzalez’s bloody body in a vacant lot in Ciudad Victoria. Gonzalez was a correspondent for Excelsior and worked for various local news outlets in the years prior.
On the day of his murder, Gonzalez was leaving his girlfriend’s house when he was blocked off on a roadway. Gonzalez refused to yield his vehicle and valuables to at least three reported male suspects. The trio are assumed to have beaten Gonzalez to death before taking his auto. According to authorities, through the use of surveillance cameras, they were able to decipher times, vehicles used, and routes taken by the attackers. The cameras allowed authorities to identify and capture Zuriel and recover the stolen vehicle.
Gonzalez is the second journalist murdered in Tamaulipas in 2018. In January, a team of assassins ambushed and killed columnist and semi-retired journalist Carlos Dominguez Rodriguez in Nuevo Laredo. Dominguez was stabbed to death in front of his family. Authorities arrested a relative of the former mayor of Nuevo Laredo and several other individuals allegedly linked to the homicide.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “Francisco Morales” from Tamaulipas.