Regina Martinez, Mexican crime reporter, found dead in Veracruz
Police gather outside the house of Mexican journalist Regina Martinez, in Xalapa, Veracruz State, Mexico, on April 28, 2012.
Regina Martinez, a crime reporter who covered drug trafficking for investigative Mexican news magazine Proceso, was found dead in Veracruz state on Saturday, Fox News reported.
Officials said her body was found in the bathroom of her home in Xalapa, the Los Angeles Times reported. She appeared to have been beaten before being strangled to death.
On Friday, Proceso published a story she wrote on the arrests of nine municipal police officers suspected of drug ties, the LA Times reported.
According to Fox News:
Recently Veracruz has been plagued by cartel violence, some of it between the powerful Zetas and the so-called Jalisco Cartel New Generation, which is believed to be linked to the Sinaloa cartel.
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Crime reporters who live in areas of Mexico with high levels of drug trafficking are regularly targeted by crime gangs, according to the LA Times.
Two other journalists have been found dead in Veracruz over the past year, Fox News reported. In June 2011, Miguel Angel López Velasco, a columnist and deputy editor with the newspaper Notiver was shot by gunmen, who also killed his wife and one of his children. In July 2011, Yolando Ordaz de la Cruz, a Notiver reporter who wrote about police affairs, was found with her throat slit.
At least 51 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, Fox News reported.
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