Reporter in serious condition after being shot in Mexico

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

MEXICO CITY - (KRT) - A Nuevo Laredo radio reporter remained in serious but stable condition Thursday after she was shot at close range by an unidentified assailant.

Dolores Guadalupe "Lupita" Garcia Escamilla, 39, a police reporter for the popular radio station Stereo 91, was hit nine times at 7:48 a.m. Tuesday at the station. Minutes earlier, Garcia had aired a live report about an attorney who was shot to death Monday. The lawyer, Fernando Partida Castaneda, had represented drug traffickers. He was apparently the latest victim in a drug war that has claimed the lives of 300 people in Mexico this year as rival cartels fight for control of the lucrative drug route leading to the Interstate 35 corridor.

As of Wednesday, 32 people had been killed in Nuevo Laredo this year and 59 in the state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas. In 2004, four journalists were slain in Mexico because of their coverage of drug traffickers, according to the Center for Journalism and Public Ethics, a watchdog group in San Miguel de Allende.

Three of those journalists were from the border, including Roberto Mora, editor of Nuevo Laredo's daily newspaper, El Manana. One journalist is listed as having disappeared, and dozens more have been picked up by drug traffickers and released only after agreeing not to investigate the traffickers' illicit activities.

Media watchdogs, including the center, say that only Iraq, Bangladesh and the Philippines had more journalists killed last year than Mexico.

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http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/world/11338698.htm

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