Ángel Ernesto Gahona López
On Saturday, April 21, 2018, Ángel Ernesto Gahona was reporting live on events taking place in Bluefields, where the police had violently repressed a demonstration, when he was shot twice, once in the head and once in the thorax after the bullet first passed through his arm.
Gahona fell in front of the Banpro bank window situated on an exterior wall of the Municipal Government building. He was taken to the Ernesto Sequeira Hospital, in shock from severe and irreversible encephalic trauma. He died at 7 o’clock that night, according to the Forensic Examiner’s Office.
Brandon Lovo and Glenn Slate were arrested, indicted and sentenced for the murder of the journalist despite the fact that Gahona’s relatives and witnesses at the scene assured they were innocent and that the true criminal was still at large. On June 11, 2019, Lovo and Slate were released from prison together with other political prisoners as part of a negotiation between the government and the Civic Alliance. Following the crime, the Gahona family received death threats that forced them to flee the country.
“Es sencillo, no hay mucho que indagar. Si el disparo hubiese salido del sector del parque la Policía hubiera capturado a los que dispararon; sin embargo, en el parque no había nadie y en el video se ve a los policías marcharse de la escena del crimen”