Ecuador\u2019s youngest mayor, 27-year-old Brigitte Garc\u00eda, was found shot dead Sunday morning, the country\u2019s national police said. <\/p>\n
In a statement posted on X, police said that Garc\u00eda, the mayor of San Vicente, a small coastal city, was in what is believed to be a rental car along with her communications director, Jairo Loor, who was also killed from a gunshot wound. Preliminary investigations suggest the shots were fired from inside the car, police said. <\/p>\n
Further investigations are underway, police said. In a statement Sunday, the Ecuadorian Ministry of Government called the incident a \u201ccriminal action\u201d and referenced a national \u201cfight against terrorism, organized crime and political corruption,\u201d although they did not accuse any person or group of being behind the killings. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe stand in solidarity with their families and reaffirm our commitment to use all force of the State to not leave these crimes unpunished,\u201d the ministry said. <\/p>\n
Garcia was the youngest mayor in the country, according to her X profile. Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa took to social media\u00a0to express his disbelief, saying, \u201cenough!\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cMy God! Brigitte! She was the youngest mayor of the country,\u201d he added, along with a photo that showed him and Garc\u00eda embracing. <\/p>\n
A memorial for Garc\u00eda is planned for Monday afternoon, according to the San Vicente municipality. Her burial is scheduled for Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Ecuador has been grappling with a surge in violence at\u00a0the hands of armed gangs. <\/p>\n
In January, Ecuador declared a state of emergency after notorious gang leader\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Adolfo Mac\u00edas, also known as \u2018Fito\u2019, escaped from prison in Guayaquil. Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared an \u201cinternal armed conflict\u201d in the nation the following day and ordered armed forces to execute \u201cmilitary operations to neutralize\u201d the violence across the country. More than 2,000 people were detained less than two weeks after the decree, according to the president\u2019s office. <\/p>\n
Garc\u00eda was elected last year as a member of the left-wing Citizen Revolution Party, which is aligned with Correa, the former president. <\/p>\n
According to her social media feed, she had worked in recent weeks to help bring clean drinking water to San Vicente, meeting recently with the country\u2019s development bank on the project. <\/p>\n\n
Ecuador\u2019s youngest mayor, 27-year-old Brigitte Garc\u00eda, was found shot dead Sunday morning, the country\u2019s national police said. In a statement posted on X, police said that Garc\u00eda, the mayor of San Vicente, a small coastal city, was in what is believed to be a rental car along with her communications director, Jairo Loor, who was <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17253,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}