Guatemalan reporter killed, mob burns police station
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (AFP) — A Guatemalan journalist was shot and killed in an attack that sparked unrest, leaving a police station in an Indigenous town in flames, police and local media said Saturday.
Evelio Lopez was killed late Friday in the Mam Maya village of San Pedro Necta in western Guatemala, the local press association of Huehuetenango province said.
The motive of the killing was not immediately known.
Lopez, 34, oversaw a Facebook news page called “Huehue es Noticias.”
People angered by the killing and demanding the arrest of a suspect burned the police station in San Pedro Necta and a house where an alleged suspect lived, police said.
Reporters without Borders says Guatemala is a dangerous place for news media workers, with three killed there last year.
Guatemala, a poor Central American country that endured civil war from 1960 to 1996, is notoriously violent.
Last year, it posted a murder rate of 16.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, more than twice the overall global average.
