Teacher murdered in front of schoolchildren as Lima gripped by crime wave
www.theguardian.com
Extortion rackets killed seven people in less than 12 hours in Lima recently, despite a two-month state of emergency
Late into the night, mothers chanted for justice outside their children’s school in Lima after a teacher was gunned down in front of his students in the latest and most shocking example of a surge in gang violence in Peru.
CCTV footage of the incident on Monday showed panicked children running inside the school as the body of Julio César Pacheco lay slumped inside the blue metal gates of Julio C Tello in the working-class Ate Vitarte neighborhood in the capital’s east. He had been shot dead by an assassin pretending to deliver a legal notice.
The daylight murder marked a tragic new low in a crime wave that has seen a surge of racketeering and murder. The crisis sparked two days of strikes as workers expressed their fury at what they saw as dismal law enforcement, poor leadership by an unpopular government and a deliberate weakening of anti-crime legislation by the loathed congress.