An image of Alondra and her mother Liliana, who were both shot death this week by Liliana's husband in Jalisco, Mexico.
A mother and her daughter were killed inside a local police station this week by a man who they were in the process of reporting for domestic violence. Alondra Franco, a 21-year-old woman from the small city of Poncitlán, in the central state of Jalisco, had had enough of her husband’s abuse. She asked her mother to come along to the local police station on Jan. 31 to help her report her husband, fearing he would be around. As they entered the station, her husband got out of a nearby car and shot them both, according to local authorities. “We heard like fireworks, five detonations. I was inside my home when I heard the noises and came out to see if they were fireworks, I realized it was someone using a gun,” an unnamed local neighbor told newspaper Milenio. The man, identified only as Christopher Gerardo Rodríguez, was being accused of violence against his wife, Alondra. “The man acted too fast for us to react,” Jalisco state’s General Attorney, Luis Joaquín Méndez, said during a press conference on Wednesday morning. “The police station was almost empty and there were no officers around as they all were out in the field,” he said.
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Liliana Tover, 45, Alondra’s mother, died at the scene. Her daughter died later that day at a nearby hospital, according to local reports. The killer escaped on foot, leaving his car in the middle of the street in front of the police station. He was captured on Wednesday Feb. 1, the authorities announced.
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“[Christopher Gerardo] has been arrested. This morning I said that we wouldn’t rest until we found the man who killed Liliana and Alondra,” Jalisco Governor, Enrique Alfaro, said. In Mexico, seven women go missing every day and more than 70 percent of them from Mexico State, Morelos, Jalisco, and Nuevo León, according to Mexico’s National Missing Persons Commission. In January alone, Jalisco state authorities reported at least 15 femicides, according to official records. Three of them happened the Monday before Liliana’s murder. To date, no one has been arrested for the 15 crimes against women, according to local press.