US couple killed while visiting part of western Mexico violence

A couple from the United States was shot and killed while visiting a western Mexican state Michoacánwhich has exceeded a a wave of violent crime.

State prosecutors said in a statement Thursday that the couple – identified as Gloria A., 50, and Rafael C., 53 – were traveling in a pickup truck in the town of Angamacutiro on Wednesday when they were shot and killed.

The woman died at the scene and the man died of his injuries a short time later at a local hospital, the statement said.

It was not immediately clear why the couple, who were married, were targeted.

A spokesman for state prosecutors said Reuters that the woman, who obtained US citizenship, and the man, who was born in the US to Mexican parents, had a family and a home in Angamacutiro.

Spiraling violence, much of it related to the drug trade, has killed more than 450,000 people in Mexico since 2006, when the government launched an offensive against organized crime.

President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaumwhich began in October, has refused to launch a new “war on drugs”, as the controversial program was known.

She has pledged to follow her predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's “hugs, not bullets” strategy of using social policy to tackle the causes of crime.

Gangs and drug cartels have long infiltrated, intimidated or bribed local officials to work for them, often going so far as to cut the city's budget or forces use local police to warn them or protect them from federal raids. Sometimes, police officers themselves profit from the drug trade.

Talking about cartel corruption can have fatal consequences. Earlier this year, there was a business leader in the state of Tamaulipas burn to death after complaining in TV interviews about cartel extortion. Just weeks before that, there was a prominent businessman who had made similar complaints murdered in the northern border state of Baja California.