Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla, governor of the State of Michoacán, confirmed this Monday that the Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the team that escorted the mayor of Uruapan Carlos Manzo Rodríguez for excessive use of force against his killer. According to Ramírez Bedolla, the hitman was killed when he was already neutralized: “The assassin is arrested and a few moments later there is a struggle and there is a single shot that kills the assassin.” In a press conference, the governor also assured that another line of investigation is investigating “what happened to distract or make his security circle more flexible”. “The lines of investigation are open in every sense,” he said.
On the day of Manzo’s murder, his escort consisted of eight people who, according to Ramírez Bedolla, had been chosen by him and who constituted his “most personal security team”. His guard was complemented by 14 members of the National Guard, who represented his “second circle of security”. The governor reported that, in the hypothesis that the murder was ordered by organized crime, an attempt will also be made to investigate the cell and the “concrete and real reason” for the attack. “The Prosecutor’s Office is carrying out very serious and very responsible work, with the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection led by Omar García Harfuch and its intelligence areas,” he said.
In his speech, Ramírez Bedolla defended the Michoacán Plan for Peace and Justice, presented just a day ago by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, and assured that “the difference is evident” between this strategy and those previously implemented by Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto. Furthermore, he highlighted Sheinbaum’s “sensitivity” and described his response as an “immediate” and “direct” action that will “give a completely different result.” The idea is to monitor actions every 15 days so that “what has been planned and implemented is implemented on time”, he noted.
Asked about rumors calling for his resignation over the murder of Uruapan’s former mayor, the governor downplayed the issue. “It’s normal, we understand. We understand the demonstrations and I salute and celebrate that most of the demonstrations were peaceful. We understand the anger they have for what happened. And we are working to give justice to this problem,” he underlined. Questioned by the media, he asked “not to speculate” and to wait for the “confirmed information” that emerges from the investigations.
Manzo’s murder has thrown into crisis a country plagued by violence and which, just a few weeks earlier, had already experienced two well-known murders in that same state. Bernardo Bravo, leader of the Apatzingán Valley Lemons, was assassinated on October 20, while Alejandro Torres Mora, nephew of Hipólito Mora, leader of the Self-Defense of Michoacán, was shot dead along with his wife in their home on November 1.
