In memoriam...




Jesús Gutiérrez Vergara

Journalist Jesús Gutiérrez Vergara, founder and editor of Notiface, a Facebook-based news website, was shot to death while talking with four off-duty policemen in the early hours of September 25 in a residential area in the northern city of San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, when shots were fired from a vehicle, killing the journalist and one officer, and wounding the other three.

 

Vergara, 47, was a veteran crime reporter who was well known locally, particularly for his live broadcasts from crime scenes, according to the online newspaper Infobae. Gutiérrez had recently published posts on Notiface about crime in the city, including an article about the arrest of an alleged drug trafficker and videos of police vehicles responding to an incident.

 

Hours after the events, the Attorney General's Office of the State of Sonora (FGJE) disseminated information about what happened and assured that there were three injuries, one dead and in a collateral way Jesús "N", 47 years old, a neighbor who was talking to the aforementioned, lost his life.

 

ARTICLE 19  stated in just a few hours and without a diligent and exhaustive investigation, the FGJE qualified the murder of the journalist as a collateral event, and that, to date, there are no indications that multiple lines of investigation have been opened for the facts. This contravenes the Approved Protocol for the Investigation of Crimes Committed against Freedom of Expression, which indicates that:

The MP must analyze in all cases that are presented to his knowledge, all the lines of investigation that allow to determine what happened and identify the people responsible, prioritizing the possible connection between the aggression and/or crime, as well as the exercise of the journalistic work of the victim.

 

The “Notiface Prensa Digital de San Luis” corroborated the death of the communicator and posted the image of the journalist with a black bow. The publication published the following message: “There is speculation, it is rumored, it is said, it is believed that they killed our best journalist. We will love you forever dad.”