MEXICO City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, seen as a likely contender for president in 2024, yesterday accused a top prosecutor of trying to cover up the murder of a young woman.  

The body of 27-year-old Ariadna Lopez was found on October 31 about 90 km south of the capital in the state of Morelos.  

She had gone missing the night before after leaving a restaurant in the capital city.  

Morelos Attorney General Uriel Carmona said the young woman had died of severe alcohol intoxication, denying there had been foul play after a first autopsy.  

However, Sheinbaum showed journalists footage from a surveillance camera which she said revealed a suspect loading the young woman’s lifeless body into a vehicle.  

She said Carmona was trying to “cover up a femicide.”  

At the request of the Lopez family, Mexico City officials performed a second autopsy which showed the young woman died of multiple traumas, with evidence of blows to her body.  

Between January and September, Mexico recorded the murders of 695 women, compared to 978 in all of 2021, official figures show. Most of these crimes went unpunished.   

Also yesterday, a 46-year-old woman who had been searching for her missing son was shot dead outside her home in the northern state of Guanajuato, the local prosecutor’s office said.  

Maria Carmela Vazquez was the latest in a string of family members of the missing to be murdered.   

Her mother told local media that “two young boys” had knocked on the door and asked for her daughter. “When she came out, they killed her.” – AFP, November 8, 2022.