Mexican journalist, Hector Gonzalez Antonio, was found beaten to death on a gravel side street in the city of Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, according to the Tamaulipas state attorney general.
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Antonio wrote for local media and one of Mexico’s biggest national newspapers, El Excelsior.
The attorney general said authorities were "opening an investigation to identify and locate those responsible for the homicide," the attorney general said. So far there are no leads in the case.
Mexico’s Representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, Jan-Albert Hootsen tweeted earlier today that the precise cause of death was still unclear.
Pascal Beltran Del Rio, editorial director of Excelsior tweeted of Antonio’s killing, "It’s with immense pain that I share the news of the murder of my colleague, Hector Gonzalez Antonio, a magnificent person, a correspondent for Excelsior and Grupo Imagen in Tamaulipas. A big hug in solidarity with his family. I also call for immediate answers in this case and for justice."
This is Mexico’s sixth journalist assassination this year so far. Just last week Alicia Diaz Gonzalez was murdered in the northern state of Nuevo Leon. Gonazlez wrote for the El Financiero and El Norte. Journalist Juan Carlos Huerta was gunned down at his home in Tabasco on May 15, just one year after reporter Javier Valdez was riddled with bullets in the streets of Sinaloa.
Valdez had reported about internal rivalry within the powerful Sinaloa cartel just before he was shot down.