Two top aides of Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada were shot dead in an attack in a central part of the capital, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Tuesday.
Ximena Guzmán, the mayor’s private secretary, and José Muñoz, an adviser to Brugada, were shot at an intersection in the borough of Benito Juarez in Mexico City, Sheinbaum confirmed, visibly upset while reading from a statement during her daily news conference.
“There won’t be impunity, those responsible will be detained and will have to confront justice,” she read.
Brugada also posted the statement to X, but did not share whether she was the intended target.
Authorities said the shooting was done by gunmen on a motorcycle around 7:30 a.m. local time, and that they are now reviewing surveillance camera footage to identify the attackers, as well as determine a motive.
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Photos shared by local media showed a black Audi with four bullet holes in windshield on the driver’s side and two sheets covering what appeared to be bodies.
Police inspect the car where Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada’s private secretary, Ximena Guzman, and adviser, Jose Munoz, were killed in Mexico City, Tuesday, May 20, 2025.
Fernando Llano / The Associated Press
Brugada was not in the car when the attack took place, a Mexico City government official told Reuters.
Mexico City mayor Clara Brugada speaks during a press conference on the killing of two close officials in Mexico city on May 20, 2025.
Ulises Ruiz / AFP via Getty Images
Mexico security analyst David Saucedo told The Associated Press the killings had the hallmarks of an organized crime hit and he believes was intended to put pressure on Brugada’s administration. He questioned why someone as important as Guzmán to Brugada did not have a security detail.
Brugada is the second-most powerful political player in Mexico, after Sheinbaum, who served as mayor of Mexico City prior to winning the presidency last year. Sheinbaum and Brugada are strong allies and both work in the county’s Morena party.
Forensic investigators work at the crime scene of the killing of Ximena Guzman in Mexico city on May 20, 2025. Gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead Guzman, an aide to Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada, at a busy avenue in the capital on May 20, 2025, authorities said.
Valentina Alpide / AFP via Getty Images
“Our solidarity and support to the families of these two people, who had been working in our movement for a long time. We know them. Our solidarity with their families and with Clara,” Sheinbaum said in her news conference Tuesday.
The Mexico City government has suffered attacks in the past.
In 2020 the then-Mexico City police chief Omar García Harfuch, now the federal security minister, was shot and injured in an assassination attempt that killed two of his bodyguards. That attack was blamed on one of the country’s most powerful drug gangs, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
— With files from Reuters and The Associated Press
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