Death of a young American journalist in Oaxaca

City Beat has an excellent story this week by John Ross on the murder of American journalist Brad Will in Oaxaca in October 2006.

Here's the URL: http://www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=6051

Here's an excerpt:

"...Two of the gunmen were later identified by Mexican news media as Pedro Carmona, a local PRI political fixer and cop, and Police Commander Orlando Manuel Aguilar Coello. One of the men crouched down behind Carmona was Abel Santiago Zárate, aka "El Chino" (the grasshopper). Santiago Zárate and Aguilar Coello were reported to be the personal bodyguards of PRI Municipal President Manuel Martinez Ferrea. The other two men would be fingered as Juan Carlos Soriano (aka "El Chapulin") and Juan Sumano, both Santa Lucia police officers.

"You can see the gunmen in the film Brad Will shot just moments before the bullets hit him, and they are clearly framed in a picture taken at the same time that ran on the front page of El Universal.

" When the shooting erupted, Will took cover on the opposite side of the narrow street from the rest of the press. He was crouched against a lime green wall when his bullet came for him. You can hear the shot on the sound track and listen to Will's cries as it tears through his Indymedia T-shirt and penetrates his heart. A second shot caught him in the right side. There was little blood, the first slug having stopped his heart from pumping. On film that Gustavo Vilchis and others took, the entrance wound looks like a deep bruise..."