09 May 2022 | CPJ
2 journalists shot dead in Veracruz, Mexico
Shooting
On May 9 2022, journalists Yessenia Mollinedo Falconi and Johana García were shot by an unknown number of assailants in a parking lot in Cosoleacaque, a town in the eastern state of Veracruz.
Mollinedo, 45, was the founder and editor of El Veraz, a news outlet that covers southern Veracruz, where García was recently hired as a camera operator, according to reports. On May 9, the Veracruz state prosecutor’s office published a statement on Facebook confirming it had opened an investigation.
Mollinedo previously covered crime and security in the area for El Veraz but stopped doing so after receiving numerous death threats over the past few years, according to the journalist’s brother, Ramiro Mollinedo Falconi, who spoke with CPJ by video call. Most of her articles had been taken down out of concern for her safety.
On April 30, 2022, Mollinedo received a death threat while covering events in Cosoleacaque on Children’s Day, a Mexican national holiday. Two men riding a motorcycle “approached her and told her they knew who she was,” Ramiro Mollinedo told CPJ. Later that day, Mollinedo told her brother that she was followed by two men in a taxi who she described as physically imposing and who stared at her in a way that she perceived as threatening. CPJ was unable to confirm whether the threat was related to her reporting.
El Veraz was founded in 2015 and employed at least nine other reporters and editors at the time of Mollinedo’s death, Ramiro Mollinedo told CPJ, who added that the outlet’s website is no longer online due to financial difficulties.
Read the original article here: https://cpj.org/data/people/yessenia-mollinedo-falconi/
