3 held in killing of new Mexico mayor

Gisela Mota, a former federal lawmaker, was killed at her home in Temixco by gunmen. Officials said those taken into custody were a 32-year-old woman, an 18-year-old man and a minor. She was killed the following day.

Temixco, located 60 miles south of the country’s capital Mexico City, is the fourth largest city in Mexico and has 100,000 residents.

Before becoming mayor, Gisela Mota had represented Morelos state as a congresswoman since 2013.

After the mayor was assassinated, Mota’s bodyguards and police chased five suspects, which ended up in a shootout, killing two and arresting three. They gave few other details, though state Attorney General Javier Perez Duron said the suspects had been tied to other crimes.

Morelos state has been plagued by drug cartel violence as well as kidnappings and extortion.

Local media reports say that the suspects fled in a van after committing the crime, but local police and Ms Mota’s bodyguards pursued them.

Morelos governor Graco Ramirez on Sunday said the mayor was murdered on Saturday by an organised crime gang named “Los Rojos”, Xinhua reported. Cartels in search of to control communities & towns have typically focused local officers & mayors in Mexico.

In a statement distributed via Twitter, the group said that more than a thousand public municipal servants have been killed since 2006, mainly by organized crime. She became the latest politician of the hundreds who have been victims of drug-related criminal activity in Mexico, and the first one of 2016. More than 100,000 people were killed in the Mexican drug war for almost a decade.

In 2006, then-President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown on organized crime, but since then violent homicides have spiked.