A journalist has been killed in the northern Mexico border city of Tijuana. Lourdes Maldonado López was the second journalist killed in Tijuana in a week and the third in Mexico this month.
The Baja California state prosecutor's office says Maldonado was found shot to death inside a car Sunday.
In 2019, she went to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's daily morning news conference and asked for his help, saying she feared for her life. She had been in a labor dispute with a man later elected governor. The president on Monday called for a full investigation and urged against jumping to conclusions.
The labor dispute involved Jamie Bonilla, the owner of the PSN media outlet, as CNN reported. Lopez previously worked for the company and sued the company for unfair dismissal. She won that lawsuit just days before she was killed.
CNN reported that Bonilla posted an interview he did with a Mexican radio station on his Twitter account Monday where he said he hadn't seen Lopez for many years but had a "good relationship" with her.
Mexico has had federal protections in place for journalists for the last 10 years, the Associated Press reports. There are around 500 journalists and 1,000 activists enrolled in the program. The Committee to Protect Journalists says that in the last five years, 10 journalists enrolled in some type of protection have been killed.
