Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): A senior executive of a financial newspaper was shot to death Monday evening, and it may be he wasn't even the killers' target. Pierre Fould Gerges, 48, vice president of Reporte Diario de la Economia, was killed as he traveled down Avenida Araure in Chuao in a car. Two men came by on a motor bike and shot him at close range. Witnesses counted at least 17 shots, of which at least a dozen riddled the car.
Fould Gerges was hit several times, the car crashed into a tree, and he was taken to a hospital where he died from multiple wounds that night.
The car belonged to the editor of the newspaper, his brother, Tannous Fould Gerges. They apparently resembled each other to the point where they may have been confused at a distance. One theory is that the killers were after Tannous following a string of corruption stories. A legal advisor to Reporte said senior executives at the newspaper had received a series of death threats via telephone calls and electronic mail, and this had been reported to the authorities.
The case is being investigated by the scientific and investigative police, Cicpc, who are said to have thought they were dealing with contract killing. That fitted in well with what happened as gunmen on bikes blazed away without making any attempt to stop much less capture the executive.
News of the murder -- and its entirely predictable high profile it quickly was acquired in the rest of the media -- could not have come at a worse time for Interior & Justice Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin. Shortly before the shooting, he'd insisted the murder rate was in descent. Accusing the media of making things up, he said it was nonsense to say there'd been 500 murders in Metropolitan Caracas last month. However, he admitted to a total of 232 killings in the capital, which still works out at 52 a week. Of these, 70 percent were bandits killing bandits and there were "very few" murders of innocent people, he claimed.
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