Luis Arturo Mondragón Morazán, director of the Canal 19 station, was gunned down by two men as he was leaving work.
(C-Libre/IFEX) – Luis Arturo Mondragón Morazán, director of the Canal 19 station and the news programme “Teleprensa”, was gunned down in El Paraíso on the night of 14 June 2010.
According to police spokesperson Leonel Sauceda, the 51-year-old news director was shot four times by two men who had been waiting for him outside the station building. The murder occurred between 9:30 and 9:45 p.m., as Mondragón was leaving work, in the central neighbourhood of Santa Clara, in El Paraíso, eastern Honduras.
Speaking on the H.R.N. radio station on 15 June, Security Minister Oscar Álvarez said the police are following up on a lead by the journalist’s brother, who believes that a local coffee baron may be behind the assassination.
The murder is likely not connected with the journalist’s profession, Álvarez said, insinuating that the murder may be related to personal matters. Mondragón was facing accusations of stealing cattle and sexual assault, the security minister noted.
Sauceda confirmed that Mondragón had previously been detained for cattle theft.
Mondragón is the eighth journalist to be killed in Honduras since the beginning of the year. No one has been detained in connection with the murders. Journalist Joseph Hernández was killed on 1 March in Tegucigalpa, in an shooting that resulted in injuries to journalist Carol Cabrera; on 11 March, David Meza Montecinos was murdered in La Ceiba; Nahún Palacios Arteaga was riddled with bullets on 14 March, in Tocoa, Colón; journalists José Bayardo Mairena Ramírez and Manuel Juarez were both assassinated on 26 March; radio announcer Luis Chévez Hernández was gunned down on 11 April, and on 22 April, journalist Jorge Alberto Orellana was killed in the city of San Pedro Sula.
