May 12 (UPI) -- A mayoral candidate in Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum's ruling party was killed this past weekend with four others during a campaign rally in the eastern state of Veracruz.
Yesenia Lara Gutierrez, the Morena party candidate for mayor of Texistepec in Mexico's June 1 election, was shot and killed Sunday at a campaign rally that left four supporters dead and three others wounded.
"No position or office is worth a person's life," Veracruz Governor Rocio Nahle Garcia posted early Monday morning on X.
Video footage depicted people in a crowd running away carrying Morena party flags as gunshots were heard in the background.
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"We don't know the motive," Sheinbaum, Mexico's first woman president, said Monday at a news conference on Sunday's fatal political event.
In condemning the attack, Sheinbaum's Morena party posted Monday afternoon to social media that, "We trust that state authorities, with whom we maintain constant contact, will continue their investigations to ensure that impunity is eliminated."
On Monday, Mexico's president, 62, confirmed a probe was "in coordination with the governor of the state of Veracruz and we are conducting investigations."
Meanwhile, Nahle Garcia says she instructed Veracruz's attorney general and its security apparatuses "not to stop until they find" Lara's killer.
"We will find those responsible for this cowardly murders of the candidate and Morena supporters in Texistepec," added Nahle Garcia, 61, the first woman governor of Veracruz and Mexico's energy secretary until 2023.
Lara's assassination was the latest in a string of recent violent killings targeting Mexican politicians and candidates largely lead by gang violence tied to drug-trafficking cartels.
"The strength of our youth is the vitality that motivates me to keep walking day by day," Lara wrote hours before her shooting death.
On Friday, Jalisco municipal councilwoman Cecilia Ruvacalba was killed when three masked and armed individuals shot her at Teocaltiche Community Hospital, where she was head nurse.
In October, Chipacingo Mayor Alejandro Arcos was decapitated by criminal groups shortly after the city's government secretary, Francisco Tapia, was shot to death.
This was followed by a separate incident in late April when Teocaltiche City Council Secretary Jose Luis Pereida was shot and killed outside a seafood restaurant allegedly by cartel gunmen.
