An Israeli citizen was assassinated in broad day light on Thursday in an affluent neighborhood in the west of Medellin, Colombia’s second largest city, local authorities said.
According to local police, the man was fatally shot in the head twice by two men on a blue Yamaha Libero motorcycle in the western Laureles district, a popular neighborhood for foreigners.
Fact sheet
Medellin crime and violence statistics
Security Secretary Gustavo Villegas told local media that the victim had been married to a Colombian woman for the past five years.
But according to the police report, obtained by local newspaper El Colombiano, “the victim was known for taking Israelis to an establishment in the district where they would consume drugs and contracted the services of women working in prostitution.”
Villegas said that “the motives are still investigated. This is about a man who was involved in real estate and had been called to the place where the assassins attacked him.”
The Israeli is the second foreign homicide victim this month.
On June 4, a Mexican man as assassinated in the Belen Los Alpes neighborhood.
According to El Colombiano, 222 people have been murdered in Medellin so far this year, a 9% increase to the same period last year.
The increase would be the first since the end of a major turf war between factions of local crime syndicate La Oficina de Envigado that erupted after the 2008 extradition of their then-leader, “Don Berna.”