Chihuahua Governor Hurt in Attack

The governor of the violence-plagued state of Chihuahua narrowly escaped being killed Wednesday, allegedly by a former policewoman reported to have a history of psychological problems.

Gov. Patricio Martinez was listed in good condition after a bullet grazed his head. His alleged assailant, identified as 30-year-old Victoria Loya, was arrested at the scene. She had been fired from the state police force in 1997 after attacking her husband, officials said.

The shooting sent jitters through Mexico, where memories are still fresh of the 1994 assassinations of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and the party’s secretary-general, Francisco Ruiz Massieu.

Martinez, also a member of the PRI, had recently been an outspoken critic of drug-related corruption of police in his northern state, a hotbed of drug trafficking. Government and party officials emerged shortly after the shooting Wednesday to decry political violence in the country, and initial media reports focused on Martinez’s efforts against corruption.

But Victor Gonzalez, a spokesman for the state attorney general, said investigators believe that Loya acted alone and was suffering emotional problems. A state government spokesman, Victor Anchondo, said that Loya’s troubled past included an incident in which she had attacked her husband and “sent him to a hospital.”

The shooting occurred as Martinez was headed downstairs at his headquarters in the city of Chihuaha, the provincial capital, trailing some assistants, a security guard and a group of reporters.

Loya allegedly stepped out of a crowd of people on the landing of the stairs and pulled a gun from a purse to shoot the governor at close range.

Television cameras captured a dazed-looking Loya being led away from the scene as officials crowded around the fallen governor in apparent confusion, arguing and gesturing. Martinez was shown lying on his back in a pool of blood. “Hang on, Patricio!” someone yelled.

Martinez was taken by ambulance to a local clinic and within hours was reported to be alert and with good prospects for a quick recovery, said his spokesman, Antonio Garcia.

Dr. Jose Antonio Leal, director of the clinic, told Associated Press that the bullet hit Martinez’s skull and shattered, with one fragment penetrating a “relatively unimportant” part of the brain. Leal said Martinez did not have any neurological damage and could be released within a week.

Martinez, 52, is considered a symbol of the PRI’s efforts to reform itself. The ex-publisher was the first PRI governor to be selected through primaries with popular support, rather than through the more traditional dedazo, or fingering, in which political leaders named successors.

In July, the PRI lost the Mexican presidency for the first time in seven decades in an election that brought Vicente Fox of the National Action Party to power.

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Jose Diaz Briseno of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.