A 30-year-old American photojournalist has become the latest reporter to go missing while covering Mexico's drug war, after he left his hotel room in the violent drug cartel stronghold of Nuevo Laredo to take pictures of a shooting and never returned.
The Mexican newspaper where Zane Alejandro Plemmons Rosales had been working disclosed Friday that the San Antonio resident had gone missing in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, the headquarters of the Zetas drug cartel, on the night of May 21. "[He] found himself at his hotel and, upon hearing gunshots, left for the street in order to cover the news," said the Mazatlan-based paper, El Debate. "Since then his whereabouts are unknown."
Plemmons' sister, Lizanne Sanchez, told a San Antonio television station that when she contacted his hotel, she was told that two masked, armed men had entered the hotel at 3 a.m., demanded his room keys from the receptionist, and removed all of this belongings. Sanchez said his bank accounts have not been touched.
Mexico is the most dangerous country in the Americas for the press, according to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. "Since 2000, 80 journalists have been killed in Mexico -- eight so far this year -- and 17 journalists remain missing," said Summer Harlow of the Knight Center.
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