MEXICO CITY (AP) — At least four people were involved in the killing of the personal secretary and a close adviser of Mexico City ’s Mayor Clara Brugada, the capital’s police chief said Wednesday, as more details emerged of the worst attack against public officials in the capital in recent years.
Pablo Vázquez Camacho said investigators had identified and found a motorcycle and two other vehicles used in the escape of the gunman who killed the two officials Tuesday morning as they traveled in a vehicle along a busy thoroughfare.
Brugada's personal secretary, Ximena Guzmán, and an adviser, José Muñoz, were shot dead in Guzmán’s car, authorities said.
Mexico City chief prosecutor Bertha Alcalde Luján said the gunman had fled on a motorcycle that was hidden nearby and then changed vehicles twice as he and others fled into neighboring Mexico State.
Clothes were recovered in the vehicles and were being analyzed, but investigators could not yet offer a possible motive, the prosecutor said.
She said Guzmán was shot eight times and Muñoz four times.
Alcalde said that given the circumstances, investigators believe “it was a direct attack and with an important degree of planning and those who killed them had previous experience.”
Still, she said investigators could not yet propose a motive or say who was behind the killings.
“We cannot conclude that this is tied to organized crime, much less speak now of a particular organized crime group,” Alcalde said.
Both officials said Wednesday that investigators had detected the presence of an individual at the site of the attacks days before they occurred, which would suggest knowledge of the victims' routines.
The attack, which happened at around 7 a.m., left four bullet holes clustered on the driver’s side of the windshield. One body lay on the pavement.
Vázquez Camacho said that neither Guzmán nor Muñoz had any special security measures, but both had received training about protecting themselves.
“They are people who worked very closely with the people ... and they did their work without fear,” he said.
President Claudia Sheinbaum, who is an ally of Brugada and a former mayor of Mexico City before winning the presidency last year, had declined to speculate on the possible involvement of organized crime during her press briefing earlier Wednesday.
At the scene of the attack Wednesday morning, hundreds of commuters passed with most oblivious to what had occurred a day earlier. Some, however, noticed the handwritten signs with messages of remembrance to the two victims and flowers and candles left on the sidewalk.
University student Loretta García Oriz said she had passed the site Tuesday when Guzmán and Muñoz's bodies were still at the scene. “Passing here gives me the same trauma,” she said Wednesday.
Oscar Sánchez's taco stand isn't far from the crime scene, but said Wednesday he didn't know what had happened until another vendor told him and police began to set up a perimeter. The attack showed that it doesn't matter if you're an official or an average person, he said. "It's all the same."
Mexico City's mayor is considered second in political importance only to the president. The mayor's office has long been a stepping stone to the presidency, something true for Sheinbaum and her predecessor.
But for years, the idea has prevailed of Mexico City as a relatively peaceful oasis protected from the brutal drug cartel violence prevalent in other parts of the country. There has always been street crime, but the cartels, while present, maintained a lower profile in the capital.
That illusion was partially dashed in 2020 with the brazen ambush of Mexico City's then police chief on another central boulevard. Omar García Harfuch was wounded, but two bodyguards and a bystander were killed in the attack involving more than 20 people and heavy weaponry.
García Harfuch immediately blamed the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
There had not been another such attack on public officials in the capital since then.
Navy soldiers stand guard outside the funeral home where the remains of Ximena Guzmán, the personal secretary of the Mexico City mayor, and advisor to the mayor, José Muñoz, are being held, in Mexico City, Wednesday, May 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
A makeshift altar honoring Ximena Guzmán, the personal secretary of the Mexico City mayor, and advisor to the mayor, José Muñoz, stands outside a funeral home in Mexico City, Wednesday, May 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
A framed image of Ximena Guzmán, the personal secretary to Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada who was murdered a day earlier, adorns an altar during a wake at a funeral home in Mexico City, Wednesday, May 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powellsaid Sunday the Department of Justice has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in President Donald Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he's repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project Trump has criticized as excessive.
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Stocks are falling on Wall Street after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Department of Justice had served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony about the Fed’s building renovations.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3% in early trading Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 384 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.2%.
Powell characterized the threat of criminal charges as pretexts to undermine the Fed’s independence in setting interest rates, its main tool for fighting inflation. The threat is the latest escalation in President Trump’s feud with the Fed.
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She says she had “a very good conversation” with Trump on Monday morning about topics including “security with respect to our sovereignties.”
Last week, Sheinbaum had said she was seeking a conversation with Trump or U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the U.S. president made comments in an interview that he was ready to confront drug cartels on the ground and repeated the accusation that cartels were running Mexico.
Trump’s offers of using U.S. forces against Mexican cartels took on a new weight after the Trump administration deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Sheinbaum was expected to share more about their conversation later Monday.
A leader of the Canadian government is visiting China this week for the first time in nearly a decade, a bid to rebuild his country’s fractured relations with the world’s second-largest economy — and reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, its neighbor and until recently one of its most supportive and unswerving allies.
The push by Prime Minster Mark Carney, who arrives Wednesday, is part of a major rethink as ties sour with the United States — the world’s No. 1 economy and long the largest trading partner for Canada by far.
Carney aims to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports in the next decade in the face of President Trump’s tariffs and the American leader’s musing that Canada could become “the 51st state.”
▶ Read more about relations between Canada and China
The comment by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson came in response to a question at a regular daily briefing. President Trump has said he would like to make a deal to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark, to prevent Russia or China from taking it over.
Tensions have grown between Washington, Denmark and Greenland this month as Trump and his administration push the issue and the White House considers a range of options, including military force, to acquire the vast Arctic island.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO.
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Trump said Sunday that he is “inclined” to keep ExxonMobil out of Venezuela after its top executive was skeptical about oil investment efforts in the country after the toppling of former President Nicolás Maduro.
“I didn’t like Exxon’s response,” Trump said to reporters on Air Force One as he departed West Palm Beach, Florida. “They’re playing too cute.”
During a meeting Friday with oil executives, Trump tried to assuage the concerns of the companies and said they would be dealing directly with the U.S., rather than the Venezuelan government.
Some, however, weren’t convinced.
“If we look at the commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s uninvestable,” said Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company.
An ExxonMobil spokesperson did not immediately respond Sunday to a request for comment.
▶ Read more about Trump’s comments on ExxonMobil
Trump’s motorcade took a different route than usual to the airport as he was departing Florida on Sunday due to a “suspicious object,” according to the White House.
The object, which the White House did not describe, was discovered during security sweeps in advance of Trump’s arrival at Palm Beach International Airport.
“A further investigation was warranted and the presidential motorcade route was adjusted accordingly,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Sunday.
The president, when asked about the package by reporters, said, “I know nothing about it.”
Anthony Guglielmi, the spokesman for U.S. Secret Service, said the secondary route was taken just as a precaution and that “that is standard protocol.”
▶ Read more about the “suspicious object”
Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.
Iran had no direct reaction to Trump’s comments, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking to foreign diplomats in Tehran, insisted “the situation has come under total control” in fiery remarks that blamed Israel and the U.S. for the violence, without offering evidence.
▶ Read more about the possible negotiations and follow live updates
Fed Chair Powell said Sunday the DOJ has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he has repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project that Trump has criticized as excessive.
Powell on Sunday cast off what has up to this point been a restrained approach to Trump’s criticisms and personal insults, which he has mostly ignored. Instead, Powell issued a video statement in which he bluntly characterized the threat of criminal charges as simple “pretexts” to undermine the Fed’s independence when it comes to setting interest rates.
▶ Read more about the subpoenas
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters while in flight on Air Force One to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from Florida, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
