Updated 22.45
SPANISH POLICE ARRESTED a mother and daughter suspected of shooting dead a ruling party politician in broad daylight in an apparent act of personal vengeance.
Police covered the body of Leon provincial council chief Isabel Carrasco with a white sheet as it lay on a pedestrian bridge over a river in the northern city, media photographs showed.
“She was shot several times and she died,” a spokeswoman for the ruling Popular Party told AFP after the late-afternoon shooting.
A police spokeswoman said two women believed to be mother and daughter had been detained over the killing.
“We are investigating the participation of both of them in the act,” the police spokeswoman told AFP.
The Interior Ministry said the killing, which shocked a country unused to such acts since the Basque separatists ETA announced an end to violence, did not appear to be politically motivated.
“Everything points to it being a personal act of vengeance unrelated to her public position,” an Interior Ministry spokeswoman said.
Numerous PP officials were assassinated in the 1990s and early 2000s in killings blamed on ETA, which declared a definitive end to violence in October 2011.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and other politicians from the ruling party and the opposition Socialist Party cancelled official engagements.
Rajoy said on Twitter he was “dismayed by the murder of Isabel Carrasco”.
“My condolences to her family and friends. Now is the time to be united,” he wrote.
Besides being head of the Leon regional council Carrasco, who was born in 1955, was also head of the party for the Leon province.
“The Popular Party expresses its deepest sorrow and announces the suspension of all acts planned for today,” the ruling party said in a statement. The Socialist Party, too, issued a statement expressing its condolences over the killing.
A lawyer by training, Carrasco was born in the province of Leon in 1955 and held various provincial and regional posts, according to her biography on Leon city hall’s website.
She had led the Leon provincial council since 2007.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say