This shocking footage reveals how Paraguayan journalist Humberto Coronel was mercilessly gunned down by a motorcycle hitman outside his workplace.
CCTV camera video shows the lone biker riding up to the 33-year-old as he is about to get into his car.
As he stops the bike, the gunman levels a handgun at Coronel and shoots him at close range.
The journalist can be seen falling to the pavement as the footage ends.
The hit took place on 6th September in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero, which lies on Paraguay’s border with Brazil and has long had a reputation for lawlessness.
According to police and prosecutors, the helmet-wearing biker fired 10 shots from a 9mm pistol, eight of which hit the journalist, who worked for Radio Amambay.
Months earlier, on 10th June, Coronel and fellow journalist Gustavo Baez had gone to the police to report that they had been threatened.
In his house, Baez had found a red sign written in Portuguese warning that he and Coronel “know many things”.
In the wake of the threat, Coronel had “considered” an offer of having a police escort, deputy commander of the National Police Baldomero Jorgge told local media.
Prosecutor Katia Uemura told local media that the killing is believed to be linked to the threat and was likely ordered by an organised crime group.
With Coronel’s death, the number of press workers killed in Paraguay’s Amambay Department since 1991 has risen to eight.
In a statement, the Paraguayan Union of Journalists and the Paraguayan Human Rights Coordinator said the crime “constitutes a new attack against freedom of expression and clearly shows the advance of organised crime on all of Paraguayan society, before a State that, due to incapacity or complicity, does not fulfil its role as guarantor of the human rights of all people”.
They added that the “inaction of the state results, moreover, once the crime has been committed, in impunity” and that “the mafia has spread throughout the national territory, thus allowing silence – the ultimate goal of these attacks – to deepen in some territories and spread to others”.
The identity of the hitman remains unknown.
