Home  News WOJ friends Prominent lawyer is shot dead in downtown Juárez
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Prominent lawyer is shot dead in downtown Juárez |
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Diana Washington Valdez
El Paso Times
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Sergio Dante Almaraz, a high-profile lawyer and director of the Convergencia political party in Juárez, was shot to death Wednesday afternoon in downtown Juárez.
Another man who was riding in the lawyer's Suburban was injured in the attack. Police said unidentified men wielding an AK-47 fired weapons at Almaraz at the intersection of Francisco Villa and Ignacio Mejia.
Almaraz was the defense lawyer for Javier "Cerillo" Garc’a Uribe, one of two bus drivers accused of killing eight women whose bodies were found in a cotton field in 2001. Garc’a was released in 2004 for lack of evidence, but the other accused man died in a Chihuahua City prison under suspicious circumstances.
The dead inmate's lawyer, Mario Escobedo Anaya, a friend of Almaraz's, was killed by police after a high-speed pursuit in 2003. The officers then said they mistook Escobedo for a fugitive.
ABC-TV's John Quiñones interviewed Almaraz and Escobedo for a "Downtown 20/20" television segment on the Juárez women's murders that aired in 2003.
Recently, Almaraz had told the Juárez press that if anything happened to him, he would fault a state police official who he claimed had been harassing him.
This week, journalists from Spain who are in Juárez to do stories on the women's murders said they were seeking to interview the outspoken and sometimes controversial lawyer.
Chihuahua State Deputy Attorney General Cony Velarde went to the scene of the shooting but didn't issue a statement.
Last year, Almaraz said a woman who belongs to the Juárez drug cartel and is wanted on suspicion of murder in El Paso was involved in the disappearance of his nephew. The Almaraz family said the nephew is still missing.
"What happened proves that no one is safe in Juárez. This slaying took place in the daylight and in a place with a lot of traffic and people," said Norma Andrade, co-founder of the advocacy group Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa (May Our Daughters Return Home).
"It sends a message that when you become a target, they can kill you at any time and in any place."
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