A massacre carried out on Tuesday afternoon in Atizapán, in the State of Mexico near the capital, has left four people dead, including two women—one of them pregnant—and a three-year-old child. The fourth victim was Jonathan Meléndez, the pregnant woman’s husband, keyboardist and founding member of the popular band Camilo Séptimo.
Authorities found the couple bound and shot execution-style. The little girl had also been shot execution-style. The other woman, a domestic worker, had a gunshot wound to her back. The police also found another child inside the apartment, a six-year-old boy who was left unharmed for unknown reasons. The assassins had even killed the family dog.
Authorities are investigating robbery as one of the main lines of inquiry. The State of Mexico Attorney’s Office said that one of the suspects, Diego Sebastián “N”, was a busines partner of the musician. “Since they were partners, he was able to enter the home with the victims’ consent”, said sources familiar with the investigation consulted by EL PAÍS. “One possible cause is robbery. They had homes in Valle de Bravo that they were renting out on Airbnb.”
The case has newly shaken Mexico, a country subjected to savage levels of violence for two decades. Although the federal government has recently hailed a statistical reduction in homicide violence, massacres like this one (defined as killings of three or more people) remain relatively common. Between January 2020 and March 2026 the civil association Causa en Común documented 3,036 massacres. As of March this year there had been 60.