Mexico City (EFE).- Rubí Patricia Gómez-Tagle, a member of a collective searching for missing persons, known in Mexico as “Searching Mothers,” was found murdered on Friday in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, where President Claudia Sheinbaum had held a press conference that same day.
According to local media reports, Gómez-Tagle was a member of the Corazones Unidos por una Misma Causa (Hearts United for the Same Cause) collective, an organization formed by search mothers looking for missing people in southern Sinaloa.
Her body was found inside a house in the Jabalíes neighbourhood on Santa Rosa Avenue, near the Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta bypass, where Sheinbaum had held a morning press conference hours earlier.
The activist was reportedly attacked with a bladed weapon inside the house, and her body was found in the living room.
The Sinaloa Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed the discovery in a statement, noting that “on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, the discovery of a deceased woman inside a residence in Mazatlán was reported.”
The Prosecutor’s Office stated that investigative police and forensic services personnel are working at the scene, carrying out the relevant procedures and processing it.
“According to the data collected so far, the woman has injuries in various parts of her body, presumably caused by a sharp instrument,” the authority stated.
The institution added that it is continuing to investigate to clarify the facts and determine the circumstances of the homicide.
Rubí Patricia was known in the community for participating in searches for missing persons, an activity carried out by family collectives due to the magnitude of Mexico’s missing persons crisis, in which over 133,000 people remain missing, according to official records.
In a separate statement, the Sabuesos Guerreras, a collective of searcher mothers, affirmed that the activist’s murder on the day of Sheinbaum’s visit to Mazatlán is not only an “individual tragedy,” but also a “challenge to authority.”
The collective also stressed that the crime is a “message of absolute impunity by the perpetrators.”
The murder occurred amid persistent violence in Sinaloa, where federal authorities reinforced security force presence following clashes between criminal groups and operations against drug trafficking organizations. EFE
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