The woman mayor who was kidnapped and murdered by a Mexican drug gang pleaded with her attackers for her young daughter’s life

Maria Santos Gorrostieta, who had already survived two assassination attempts, was driving the child to school when she was ambushed by a car in the city of Morelia. The 36-year-old was hauled from her vehicle and physically assaulted as horrified witnesses watched. They described how she begged for her child to be left alone and then appeared to get into her abductors’ car willingly. The little girl was left wailing as her mother was driven away. For the next week, her frantic family waited by the phone for a ransom call that never came. Gorrostieta’s body – stabbed, burned, battered and bound at wrist and ankle – would finally be found eight days on dumped by a roadside in San Juan Tararameo, Cuitzeo Township. She left behind her daughter and two sons as well as her second husband Nereo Delgado Patinoran. Hailed as a heroine of the 21st century, her death has prompted much soul-searching in a country ravaged by violence.