Apparently, it was addressed to alias ‘El Morro’, who is among the fatalities.
The shooting attack by an armed group at a restaurant in the Montañita resort, in the coastal province of Santa Elena, in southwestern Ecuador, left at least six people dead and another half dozen injured, the Prosecutor’s Office confirmed this Sunday.
The Public Ministry remarked that it has opened ex officio “a prior investigation into an armed attack at a food outlet in Montañita, which caused the death of 6 people and another 6 were injured.”
In addition, in a Twitter message, the Prosecutor’s Office specified that “the removal of the corpses and the collection of evidence” have already been carried out at the site of the massacre.
“Percuted shells of firearms, three cell phones and substances subject to control (not yet quantified)” are, among others, the evidence collected at the site of the event, added the source.
The tax agents have also collected visual evidence of the attack through the security cameras installed in the area to try to identify those responsible.
The police commander, Fausto Salinas, confirmed to the newspaper El Telégrafo that one of the people killed was a subject known by the alias “Morro”, who had already registered previous judicial processes.
“The attack, apparently, was directed against alias ‘Morro’, who is among the deceased,” Salinas added, indicating that the subject may have had some relationship with a criminal gang known as “Las Águilas.”
On May 3, the Government issued an executive decree to allow military and police operations against terrorism (organized crime), within the framework of a strategy that tries to stop the spiral of violence that has shaken Ecuadorian society in the last two years. .
The Government has begun to consider various violent actions attributed to organized crime as terrorists, especially massacres perpetrated by armed individuals in various cities in the country’s coastal zone.
News about murders committed by hitmen, extortion, kidnappings, assaults and robberies, among other crimes, attributed to organized crime groups that, according to the authorities, have ties to international drug trafficking gangs, proliferate daily in Ecuador.
EFE