By Ryan Hansen 
Two of Mayor Clara Brugada’s most trusted aides were gunned down in a brazen daytime attack on May 20, 2025, marking one of the deadliest assaults on public officials in Mexico City in recent years. Personal secretary Ximena Guzmán, 38, and senior adviser José “Pepe” Muñoz, 42, were shot at close range as Guzmán stopped her car to pick up Muñoz for their morning commute in the city’s bustling Moderna neighborhood. Authorities have characterized the killings as a “direct attack,” underscoring the chilling precision and planning behind the ambush.
Tlalpan Shooting
According to Mexico City’s chief prosecutor, Bertha Alcalde Luján, at least four individuals participated in the operation, employing a motorcycle and two additional vehicles to facilitate the escape. Investigators recovered the motorcycle used by the principal gunman and two support vehicles in neighboring Mexico State, along with discarded clothing that is now undergoing forensic analysis . Surveillance footage shows the assailant approach the driver’s side window and fire multiple rounds at point-blank range before fleeing on foot and then transferring to another vehicle .
Guzmán was struck eight times and succumbed at the scene, while Muñoz sustained four gunshot wounds and died shortly thereafter. Both aides traveled without extraordinary security measures, though they had received routine training in personal protection protocols . Mayor Brugada described Guzmán as “a wonderful woman, tireless and truly kind,” and recalled knowing Muñoz “almost since he was a child” – lauding him as “one of the most intelligent and responsible people I have ever met” .
In the immediate aftermath, President Claudia Sheinbaum – Brugada’s predecessor as Mexico City mayor and now the country’s president – halted her daily press briefing to denounce the killings and pledge full federal support for the investigation. “We know them, we stand with their families, and we will give her all the support she needs from the Mexican government,” Sheinbaum said, emphasizing that nothing less than a thorough pursuit of justice would be acceptable .
At the scene of the attack the following day, commuters hurrying to work passed beneath taped-off sections of sidewalk, some noticing the makeshift memorials—handwritten signs, flowers, and candles—mounted along the curb. University student Loretta García Oriz described her own sense of trauma: “Passing here gives me the same trauma,” she said, recalling the grisly sight she encountered when the bodies remained in place on Tuesday morning. Nearby shopkeepers expressed shock that even high-ranking city officials could be so vulnerable in an area once considered relatively secure.
Security officials have been unable to tie the attack conclusively to any organized crime group, though they do not rule out cartel involvement. Prosecutor Alcalde noted that investigators detected someone surveying the victims’ routines days before the shooting, suggesting premeditation and professional expertise on the part of the perpetrators . “It was a direct attack with an important degree of planning, and those who killed them had previous experience,” she asserted.
The slayings have shattered the long-held illusion of Mexico City as an oasis free from the cartel-driven violence that plagues much of the rest of the country. In 2020, then–police chief Omar García Harfuch survived a brazen ambush on a central boulevard, but that attack, attributed to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, left two bodyguards and a bystander dead and remains the only similar incident until now . Analysts warn that the latest killings risk escalating a cycle of violence and intimidation in the nation’s capital. Worse still, the large impunity rate gives many reason to suspect that there will be no culprit found and instead a scapegoat could be offered up.