At least nine people were injured in the attack in which Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was murdered on Wednesday, whose alleged perpetrator died after a shootout with security personnel, according to the Ecuadorian Attorney General's Office.
The wounded are part of those attending the rally that Villavicencio held in a coliseum in a crowded and central area of Quito, where as he left an unknown person opened fire on the candidate to occupy the presidential seat of Ecuador in the extraordinary general elections called for the Next Sunday August 20.
Among the injured is a candidate for assembly and two police officers, said the Prosecutor's Office, which, together with the Police, is raising evidence at the scene of the crime and at the medical center to which the victims were taken. The person who died as the alleged perpetrator of the attack was badly injured after exchanging shots with the security personnel present at the scene.
According to the Prosecutor's Office, the suspect was first transferred to a Quito court after being apprehended and from there he was apparently referred to a medical center where a Fire Department ambulance certified his death. Six people were arrested Wednesday night allegedly involved in Villavicencio's murder.
The arrests were made during a series of raids carried out in Conocoto and San Bartolo, two neighborhoods in the Ecuadorian capital, as reported by the Ecuadorian Prosecutor's Office through its official channels. At the same time, the Prosecutor's Office proceeded with the removal of Villavicencio's body from the medical center where he had been transferred after the attack and transferred it to a morgue for autopsy.
The assassination of Fernando Villavicencio has caused a huge commotion in Ecuador, in the midst of an electoral campaign marked by the security crisis that the country is experiencing, plagued by delinquency and organized crime, mostly linked to drug trafficking.
In a similar way, the mayor of Manta, Agustín Intriago, and a candidate for assembly in the northern province of Esmeraldas, on the border with Colombia, were also recently assassinated. Villavicencio, who was running in the elections for the Construye movement, had denounced death threats against him weeks before and, like the rest of the presidential candidates, he had been given police protection.
The journalist and former assemblyman, one of the main detractors of former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017), was one of the eight presidential candidates registered for these extraordinary general elections, who have been dismayed after the crime and several of them have announced that they are suspending their electoral campaigns at the same time that they have invoked a pact against insecurity.
The president of Ecuador, the conservative Guillermo Lasso, decreed a state of emergency for 60 days throughout the country. In a message to the nation after a long meeting of the State Security Committee, Lasso ratified that the general elections are held on the same date, but with a deployment of the military throughout the national territory as part of the state of emergency.
