A campaign event in Ecuador took a horrific turn Wednesday when gunfire rang out and opposition candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated. The former lawmaker was killed at a political rally for the Movimiento Construye (or Build Movement) political party at a school north of the capital Quito ahead of the first round of elections on Aug. 20, CNN reports. Villavicencio, who had been polling at around 7.5% per Fox News, was one of seven presidential candidates who had been under police protection, police said earlier this week. A suspect in the assassination was shot dead during a shootout after the incident, the local prosecutor's office says, per Reuters.
Ecuador's President Guillermo Lasso said he was "outraged and shocked" by the assassination, and vowed justice would be served. "Organized crime has come a long way, but the full weight of the law will fall on them," he said. Located between two of the biggest drug-producing locations around the globe, Peru and Colombia, Ecuador has become a part of the cocaine trafficking routes and has become more violent as rival gangs fight to control areas and distribute narcotics. Villavicencio himself addressed the violence in a May interview, saying his country had become a "narco state" and suggesting the armed forces and police needed to push back against the "political mafia." (More Ecuador stories.)
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