Otto Sonnenholzner, former vice president of Ecuador and presidential candidate in the elections this Sunday, had a scare this Saturday when a shooting was recorded near the place where he had breakfast in the coastal province of Guayas.
"We have just suffered a shooting in front of the place where I was having breakfast with my family. Thank God we are all well, but we demand an investigation of what happened," he wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
The candidate added: "The fear and impotence that I saw in the eyes of everyone present hurts me. We cannot continue like this. Tomorrow we will change course!"
In a video circulating on social networks, the candidate is seen preparing to pose for a photo with a follower in a restaurant when shots are heard and those present seek refuge. The Police assured that there was "a police pursuit" that gave results and of which they will report "in a timely manner."
This shooting adds to the acts of increasing violence that are registered in Ecuador on the eve of the elections, which the authorities attribute to organized crime with ties to drug trafficking.
Ecuador ended 2022 with a rate of 25.32 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest figure in its history. Last July, Rider Sánchez, a candidate for assembly in the province of Esmeraldas, from the political coalition that supports Sonnenholzner, was murdered. .
Francisco Tamaríz, mayor of La Libertad, in the coastal province of Santa Elena, in southwestern Ecuador, also denounced having been the target of an attack on him on Friday night. "They tried to kill me 40 minutes ago, more than eight witnesses," he wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
In a video, he indicated that two people dressed in civilian clothes got out of a white van, without identification, one of them hooded, whom he identified as "police intelligence" officials.
"They never asked absolutely anything, they did not ask for identification, absolutely nothing. Any comment other than that is a lie, and in a matter of seconds they began to riddle the vehicle where we were going with my wife, together with my comadre, my compadre," said the mayor. who is accompanied by his wife, both protected with bulletproof vests.
Consulted about the complaint, the Police advanced that they will make a statement at a press conference.
In this spiral of violence, the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio also took place on August 9, who had focused on combating corruption and drug trafficking mafias and who, days before, had denounced death threats allegedly from Adolfo Macías "Fito ", the boss of the criminal gang Los Choneros.
