An Ecuadorian congressional candidate survived an assassination attempt after a gunman shot at her, just a day after a presidential candidate was assassinated after a campaign rally.
Estefany Puente said she was driving with her father and a campaign worker when two men on a motorcycle opened fire on Thursday in Queveo, a city in Los Ríos province.
Shots fired by one of the suspects grazed Puente’s left arm and also shattered the car’s windshield. Her father and a campaign worker were also in the car and were not injured.
“Today I was the victim of an attack on my integrity,” Puente wrote on her Facebook page.
Estefany Puente, who is running for a seat in Ecuador’s National Assembly, was hit by a bullet in the left arm on Thursday after two suspects on a motorcycle drove into her car and opened fire. The incident came a day after an assassination attempt on presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio outside a school where he was holding a campaign rally
The car of Ecuadorian National Assembly candidate Estefany Puente was shot at multiple times Thursday in Quevedo, a city in Los Ríos province
As of Friday, authorities in Ecuador had made no arrests following an assassination attempt on National Assembly candidate Estefany Puente
The politician, who is running for a seat in the National Assembly, said the attack was the latest example of what residents of Quevedo, Los Ríos and all of Ecuador are experiencing because they have been “forgotten by an incapacitated government engulfed in corruption and mafia.” is involved”. , the result of previous governments (of the refugees) and the current one, of those who deal with and are protected by criminal groups.”
has reached out to Puente for comment.
Authorities checked surveillance cameras in the area hoping to identify the suspects, who were still at large as of Friday afternoon.
Puente, who previously sought office on Quevedo City Council and is running for the People’s Unity Movement, said she remains committed to continuing to work with the party’s presidential candidate, Yaku Pérez, to root out corruption in public institutions and imprisoned “white-collar criminals.”
The attack came as Ecuador was still suffering from the assassination of Fernando Villavicencio on Wednesday.
The 59-year-old, who ran for the Build Ecuador movement, was being escorted out of a school gym in Quito when he was shot shortly after getting into a vehicle.
Ecuadorian President Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated on Wednesday outside the gymnasium of a school where he was holding a campaign rally. He said on August 1 that he and his team had been threatened by a drug trafficking gang. He is pictured at Wednesday’s rally
Ecuadorian authorities have six suspects from Colombia in custody in connection with the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio on Wednesday. A seventh suspect, also from Colombia, was injured in a shootout with police and died while being taken to a hospital in an ambulance
President Guillermo Lasso said the suspects threw a grenade on the street as they fled. but it didn’t explode. Police later destroyed the grenade with a controlled explosion.
A Colombian suspect died after a shootout with police and six others were arrested. A judge ordered her to be held in pre-trial detention for 30 days.
Court documents showed that the six suspects were accused of illegal drug trafficking. Two of the defendants were charged on July 5 with accepting stolen goods.
All the men had criminal records in Ecuador and Colombia, said an Ecuadorian police spokesman.
A search of the public records database operated by the Colombian Police revealed that three of the men had no criminal record, while the remaining three were deemed “currently unrecorded by any judicial authority”.
Ecuadorian congressional candidate Estefany Puente survived an assassination attempt on Thursday. She was hit by a bullet in her left arm
Estefany Puente, a candidate for Ecuador’s National Assembly, speaks to witnesses near her vehicle after gunmen opened fire
A week before his killing, Villavicencio took part in a virtual interview with Colombian television news channel NTN24 and revealed that he was threatened by the Sinaloa Cartel, the notorious Mexican criminal organization founded by imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and another One of their key associates in Ecuador was José “Fito” Macías, the jailed boss of the Los Choneros gang.
Villavicencio, a married father of five, said the threats were a by-product of a campaign promise to break up criminal organizations linked to political figures.
“These Sinaloa cartel threats show that our government program is a program designed precisely to dismantle and dismantle these drug trafficking criminal structures in collusion with political actors, and that is perhaps the most important thing,” he said.
Ecuadorian Interior Minister Juan Zapata said the killing was a “political crime of a terrorist nature” aimed at disrupting the August 20 elections.
Lasso declared three days of national mourning and a state of emergency, which will require the deployment of additional military personnel across the country.
In his final speech before his assassination, Villavicencio promised a cheering crowd that he would fight corruption, including in the police force, and jail more criminals.
“Here I show my face.” “I’m not afraid of them,” Villavicencio said in a statement before his death, calling Macías by his pseudonym “Fito”.