María del Carmen Morales, a member of the Guerreros Buscadores collective dedicated to locating missing persons, was murdered early Thursday morning along with her son, Jaime Daniel Ramírez Morales, in the Las Villas neighborhood of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga.
The attackers reportedly struck while the pair were collecting water from a public fountain.
Morales had been searching for another son, Ernesto Ramírez Morales, who disappeared in the same neighborhood in February 2024 and remains missing.
The Jalisco Attorney General’s Office (FE) stated that, so far, there is no evidence linking the double homicide to María del Carmen’s work as a searcher. Instead, the FE said it is investigating whether the personal activities of Morales’ sons may have been related to the crime, suggesting she may have been a circumstantial victim.
The statement drew sharp criticism from the University of Guadalajara’s Committee for the Analysis of Missing Persons, which described it as “premature conjecture” that “criminalizes” all three victims.
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