State Assemblyman Hacked To Death In Mexico

MORELIA, Mexico (AP) — Authorities in western Mexico are searching for four men who hacked a state legislator to death with machetes and wounded a journalist who was apparently interviewing him.

State lawmaker Osbaldo Esquivel Lucatero had stopped with his brother to meet with a journalist by the side of a highway on the outskirts of Morelia, the capital of Michoacan state.

While the two were talking Wednesday, four men pulled up in another car and attacked the legislator and the journalist.

Acting state prosecutor Marco Vinicio Aguilera says robbery may have been a motive.

Esquivel Lucatero had been arrested in 2009 along with more than 30 Michoacan state and local officials who were accused of protecting the La Familia drug cartel. All of the charges were later dismissed.