SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero is denying allegations she had anything to do with an attack on a journalist Thursday afternoon when vandals set fire to a reporter’s car.
Surveillance cameras show one man dumping some sort of liquid into a parked SUV before throwing something inside the car, which immediately goes up in flames.
The suspect can be seen running to a waiting car that speeds away.
Yolanda Caballero, the freelance reporter involved, believes the arson event was a warning from the mayor after publishing stories critical of the city’s drainage system, which failed to prevent large-scale flooding in Tijuana during last week’s storm.
The journalist, who works for Channel 66 in Tijuana as well as two independent newspapers in the city, wrote the mayor has been attacking her on social media sending messages like this one: “How much ignorance and desperation you must have, I’m grateful for the free publicity because you’ll never see one peso from me … when you try to mislead the city you need cunning and at the very least a little bit of intelligence, which you obviously lack.”
Caballero did not deny she sent the message but insisted she had nothing to do with the arson attack and that she is not trying to intimidate the reporter.
“I am horrified with being accused of something like this,” Caballero said. “I’ve always maintained a cordial relationship based on respect for freedom of expression and ideas, not one moment have we tried to censure nor infringe on the rights of any citizen nor journalist.”
The reporter pointed to another event a few days ago where a man confronted the mayor over conditions in his neighborhood, and the mayor reportedly lashed out at the man during the public appearance saying he was a plant working for the journalist.
“I consider these words from the mayor as an attack without sustenance that puts me in a vulnerable state … maybe the mayor doesn’t know how journalism and freedom of expression work.”
Caballero told a news conference Thursday evening she “condemns the aggression toward the journalist, which was not only an attack on the reporter but on her integrity as a communicator and on the rights of freedom of expression and access to information.”
Mexico’s federal government has ordered police to protect the reporter and her family.
During his daily morning news conference, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he is asking for an investigation into the reporter’s work and how it may be related to the vandalism attack, urging investigators to find out if any crimes were committed against the reporter’s freedom of expression.
He also proclaimed Caballero’s innocence.
“She is incapable of an attack like that,” he said.
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