Mexican actress, Tania Mendoza, shot by a gunman on a motorcycle
Tania Mendoza, a 42-year-old Mexican actress who had already been kidnapped in 2010 with her husband and son, was shot dead in Cuernavaca (central Mexico), by a gunman on a motorcycle, local authorities announced Wednesday.
She was targeted Tuesday afternoon while waiting for her son to leave a sports center, according to a source in the Morelos Prosecutor's Office. According to witnesses, the attacker arrived on a motorcycle and immediately shot the actress, in front of her son, a minor.
Tania Mendoza, who was also a model, had played in the film La mera mera Reina del Sur, released in 2005, inspired by the novel of the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez Reverte.
Criminal groups linked to drug trafficking operate in Cuernavaca. Mexico has been hit by a wave of violence in which more than 300,000 people have been killed since December 2006, according to official figures, which attribute most of these crimes to drug trafficking.