Fernando Villavicencio is feared to have been assassinated. He was an outspoken critic of former President Rafael Correa, a socialist.
Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was killed in what President Guillermo Lasso called an assassination by unidentified individuals at a political rally in the country’s capital of Quito on Aug. 9.
His death comes less than two weeks before Ecuador’s elections, scheduled for Aug. 20.
Video footage on social media shows Mr. Villavicencio, 59, leaving his campaign rally at a school stadium surrounded by guards and entering a white truck. At about the same time, gunfire can be heard, and people at the event can be seen taking cover and screaming.
Ecuador’s attorney general’s office has since said that one suspect in the attack has been arrested and died of wounds sustained during the attack. According to local media reports, several armed individuals opened fire on the candidate, who was shot three times.
According to early reports, several others were injured in the attack; authorities didn’t say how many.
Mr. Villavicencio’s death comes amid a marked increase in violence in Ecuador, fueled by the growing presence of drug cartels in the country, with escalating drug trafficking and violent killings. It’s been a central issue in the presidential campaign.
Last week, Mr. Villavicencio mentioned that a drug trafficking gang leader had threatened him and his crew.
Mr. Villavicencio was married and is survived by five children.
“For his memory and his fight, I assure you that this crime will not remain unpunished,” Mr. Lasso wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Aug. 9. “Organized crime have gone very far, but all the weight of the law will fall on them.”
The Ecuadorean president said he would gather the nation’s top security officials for an urgent meeting.
Mr. Villavicencio, who served as a lawmaker until May, when the Ecuadorian National Assembly was dissolved, was the candidate for the Build Ecuador Movement and was one of eight presidential candidates in the election scheduled for Aug. 20. Opinion polls placed him at about 7.5 percent support, which ranked him fifth out of the eight candidates. He was known as the anti-corruption candidate.
