An Ecuadorian congressional candidate survived an assassination after a gunman shot at her, just one day after a presidential candidate was killed following a campaign event.
Estefany Puente revealed she was driving a vehicle with her father and a campaign staffer when two men aboard a motorcycle opened fire Thursday in Queveo, a town in Los Ríos province.
Shots fired by one of the suspects grazed Puente’s left arm and also shattered the car’s windshield. Her father and a campaign worker were also in the car and were not injured.
“Today I have been the victim of an attack on my integrity,” Puente wrote on her Facebook.
Estefany Puente, who is running for a seat in Ecuador’s National Assembly, was scraped by a bullet to the left arm after two suspects approached her car on a motorcycle and opened fire on Thursday. The incident came a day after presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was killed outside a school where he had held a campaign event.
The car of Estefany Puente, a candidate for the Ecuadorian National Assembly, was shot at several times on Thursday in Quevedo, a city in the province of Los Ríos.
On Friday, authorities in Ecuador had made no arrests following an assassination attempt on National Assembly candidate Estefany Puente
The politician, who is running for a seat in the National Assembly, said the attack was the latest example of what residents of Quevedo, Los Ríos and all of Ecuador are experiencing because they have been “forgotten by an inactive government, shrouded in corruption, mafia ‘. , the result of previous governments (of fugitives) and the current one, of those who negotiate with criminal groups and are protected by them.’
DailyMail.com reached out to Puente for comment.
Authorities reviewed surveillance cameras in the area in hopes of identifying the suspects, who were still on the run as of Friday afternoon.
Puente, who previously sought a position on Quevedo’s city council, which falls under the Popular Unity Movement, said she remains committed to working with the party’s presidential candidate, Yaku Pérez, to tackle the corruption of public institutions and imprisoned “white-collar criminals”. ‘ exterminate.
The attack comes as Ecuador was still reeling from the murder of Fernando Villavicencio on Wednesday.
The 59-year-old, who ran under the Build Ecuador movement, was being escorted from a gymnasium in Quito when he was shot just after getting into a vehicle.
Ecuadorian President Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated on Wednesday outside a school gymnasium where he had held a campaign event. He said on August 1 that he and his team had been threatened by a drug ring. He will be photographed at the rally on Wednesday
Ecuadorian authorities have taken into custody six suspects from Colombia in connection with Wednesday’s assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. A seventh suspect, also from Colombia, was wounded in a shootout with police and died while in an ambulance taking him to a hospital
President Guillermo Lasso said the suspects threw a grenade into the street during their escape. but it didn’t explode. Police later destroyed the grenade with a controlled explosion.
A Colombian suspect died after a shootout with police and six others were arrested. A judge ordered them to be held in protective custody for 30 days.
Court records showed that the six defendants were charged with illegal trade in substances. Two of the defendants were charged on July 5 with receiving stolen goods.
All of the men had criminal records in Ecuador and Colombia, an Ecuadorian police spokesman said.
A search of the public records database maintained by the Colombian police found that three of the men had no criminal record, while the remaining three were listed as “not currently required by any judicial authority.”
Ecuadorian congressional candidate Estefany Puente survived an assassination attempt on Thursday. She was scraped by a bullet in the left arm
Estefany Puente, a candidate for the National Assembly of Ecuador, talks to witnesses near her vehicle after gunmen opened fire
A week before his assassination, Villavicencio took part in a virtual interview with Colombian television news network NTN24 and revealed that he had been threatened by the Sinaloa Cartel, the notorious Mexican criminal organization founded by imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. of his key associates in Ecuador, José “Fito” Macías, the imprisoned boss of the Los Choneros gang.
Villavicencio, a married father of five, said the threats were the by-product of a campaign pledge to take down criminal organizations linked to political figures.
“What these threats from the Sinaloa Cartel are doing is demonstrating that our government program is one whose very purpose is to break down and dismantle these criminal drug trafficking structures in collusion with political actors, and this is perhaps most important,” said he. said.
Ecuador’s Interior Minister Juan Zapata said the killing was a “political crime of a terrorist nature” to disrupt the August 20 elections.
Lasso has declared three days of national mourning and declared a state of emergency requiring additional military personnel to be deployed across the country.
In his final speech before his assassination, Villavicencio promised a roaring crowd that he would fight corruption, including among the police, and incarcerate more criminals.
‘Here I show my face. I’m not afraid of them,” Villavicencio said in a statement before his death, calling Macías by his alias “Fito.”