A 22-year-old journalist with Peru’s leading Caretas magazine was gunned down in the southern town of Cañete, the magazine reported this week.
Fernando Raymondi, who was studying journalism at Lima’s San Martin de Porres University, was killed in his father’s dry goods store in Cañete on Sunday night.
Initial police reports said that Raymondi was shot by two delinquents in an attempted robbery of the store. Raymondi was studying in Lima and working at Caretas, but went home every weekend to Cañete, 148km south of Lima, to help his father in the store.
However, following the initial news, a special homicide investigation unit from Lima had taken up the investigation.
Raymondi was working in Caretas’ investigation unit under editor Americo Zambrano, where he worked on stories about the relationship between Congressman Jose Leon and a Mexican drug trafficker, as well as on the violent eviction that led to the death of a homeowner in Cajamarca by police.
“During the little time that he worked in this publishing house, Raymondi became a member of the team and showed great potential as a man of the press,” Caretas said in an article on its website.
The Associated Press said that Raymondi had been investigating a recent spat of killings in Cañete by gangs that extort construction companies. Zambrano, the Caretas editor, told the AP that it wasn’t clear, however, if the murder was in relation to that investigation.
The AP said that Raymondi is the second Peruvian journalists killed this year, and at least the fourth in the last two years.
