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The director was heading to the Guasmo Sur Hospital, located in the south of Guayaquil, when armed men intercepted the vehicle and fired shots.
The director of the Litoral Penitentiary, the largest and most populated prison in Ecuador, was murdered on Thursday in an attack that injured another prison officer who was with her at the time of the attack, according to the National Service for Comprehensive Care for Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), the state penitentiary agency.
Attack on the director
The attack on María Daniela Icaza and her companion occurred at around 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) on the highway between the town of Daule and the city of Guayaquil, where the Litoral Penitentiary is located.
Icaza was heading to the Hospital del Guasmo Sur, located in the south of Guayaquil, when, according to local media, armed men intercepted the vehicle and shot her, who was in the passenger seat.
Initially, the SNAI reported that Icaza had managed to be transferred alive to the hospital, but later confirmed her death.
Second murder of top security officials
This is the second murder of a prison official in nine days, after Alex Guevara, director of the Lago Agrio prison in the Amazonian province of Sucumbíos, was killed in similar circumstances on September 3.
The Litoral Penitentiary, officially known as the Guayas Male Deprivation of Liberty Center Number 1, is the largest of the five prisons that make up the Guayaquil penitentiary complex, where approximately 12,000 inmates are held.
More than 6,000 are in the Litoral Penitentiary, which between 2021 and 2023 was the scene of the worst massacres caused by clashes between criminal gangs fighting for internal control, at least until the militarization of these centers ordered at the beginning of the year by President Daniel Noboa.
The entry of the military into the penitentiary facilities took place within the framework of the state of emergency and “internal armed conflict” declared by the ruler against organized crime, which is attributed to a rise in criminal violence that has led Ecuador to be the country in Latin America with the highest homicide rate, registering 47.2 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023.
The wave of murders has also previously claimed the lives of other prison directors, as well as authorities at the municipal level, including several mayors, and at the national level, such as presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. EFE
