MEXICO CITY, Feb 1 — Authorities in the western Mexican state of Colima said they killed three people suspected in the shooting deaths of two family members of Mexico’s secretary of education yesterday. 

Colima, located on Mexico’s Pacific coast, is one of the country’s most violent states. It recorded the highest homicide rate in Mexico in 2023 and 2024, according to the US State Department.

The local prosecutor’s office said officers killed three suspects in the 4.30 am shooting of two women, whom Mexico’s Secretary of Public Education Mario Delgado later identified as his aunt and cousin.

They did not identify a motive in the shooting or say whether they were searching for other suspects.

“Deep shock, outrage, and sorrow over the events that occurred this morning in Colima, where my aunt Eugenia Delgado and my cousin Sheila were brutally murdered in their home,” Delgado wrote on X on Saturday.

Officials tracked the suspects’ vehicle to a Colima home on Saturday afternoon and killed three people in a gunfight, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Investigators found weapons and clothing in the suspects’ home linked to the double shooting.

Delgado was appointed education secretary by President Claudia Sheinbaum in 2024. He previously served as national president of the ruling Morena party. — AFP