Guatemalan lawmaker and 3 police officers killed in Zacapa
The attack came Friday outside a police substation in Río Hondo. Prosecutors are investigating and no arrests have been made.
Guatemalan lawmaker Julio César Portillo and three officers of the National Civil Police (PNC) died after an armed attack outside the police substation in Río Hondo, in the eastern department of Zacapa. President Bernardo Arévalo confirmed the deaths on X on Saturday and condemned the attack.
The shooting happened Friday afternoon at kilometer 137 of the Atlantic highway, which runs from the capital to Guatemala's Caribbean coast. Portillo was taken to the Zacapa Regional Hospital wounded and died that night. The officers fired back "to defend the deputy's life," the Interior Ministry said. One had been assigned to guard him; the other two were on motorcycles.
The officers "fell in the line of duty," Arévalo said, adding that he ordered the security forces to cooperate with the Public Ministry, the country's prosecutor's office.
Prosecutors are working the scene and reviewing surveillance camera footage. No one has been arrested, and the attackers and the motive remain unidentified.
Portillo, about 35, represented Zacapa in Congress for the 2024-2028 term. He was elected under the Cabal party and later moved to the National Unity of Hope party (UNE), led by Sandra Torres, which confirmed his death Friday night. Guatemala is Mexico's southern neighbor, and the killing of a lawmaker alongside his police escort is among the most serious acts of political violence in the country in years.
Three weeks ago, on Oct. 17, former prosecutor Juan Francisco Solórzano Foppa was killed in the capital. No authority has said the two cases are linked.
