Alma Rosa Rojo was driving to a print shop on Saturday. Her daughter, Yesenia, was behind the wheel. The activist—who advocates for the missing in Sinaloa—had her seven-year-old granddaughter on her lap. Another girl, aged 12, was riding in the back seat. Rojo saw two men in another car overtake them, make a U-turn, and force them to stop. One of the men opened the door, stepped out, and fired at them point-blank. It is yet another scene of the daily violence plaguing Culiacán, the capital of a state that has been grappling with an insecurity crisis for two years.
“The granddaughter I was holding on my lap put her hands out in front, as if trying to stop the bullets. I grabbed her and tried to move aside, but that’s how I got wounded. The bullet went through my arm and lodged in my back,” recounts Alma Rosa, a pioneer in the state’s movement for the missing; she has been searching for her brother, Miguel Ángel, since 2009. He was abducted by men in Pueblos Unidos while he was out buying water.
“There were eight shots, and they were all aimed at me,” Rojo adds. The bullets pierced part of the hood and shattered the windshield, scattering glass across Jesús Silva Herzog Avenue in southern Culiacán.
One of the bullets passed through her left arm and traveled across her back, lodging in her upper back, where a small lump is visible.
“They had stopped shooting at us when one of my granddaughters lifted her head, and they fired two more shots,” the woman narrates. “I still have the bullet in my back; they couldn’t get it out. The doctors left it there. We’ll see if they can remove it later on,” she adds.
The targeted attack took place just a block away from the home of one of her daughters, in the Esthela Ortiz neighborhood. This area has been under military siege since September 2024, when a bloody conflict broke out within the Sinaloa Cartel between the “Los Chapitos” and “Los Mayitos” factions.
The Sinaloa Attorney General’s Office has determined that this was a targeted attack; consequently, the case is being investigated *ex officio* as attempted femicide. Prosecutors link the incident to Rojo’s work as a search activist. To date, no one has been arrested in connection with the armed attack.
The neighborhood is a site of interest for the cartel, as it has served as a base for local drug dealing and for the forced recruitment of cartel members. The area had recently become a hotspot for violence following the murders of two hairstylists, prompting authorities to bolster the military presence. Troops deployed there included some of the 300 personnel sent on August 25 by the Claudia Sheinbaum administration to strengthen the security strategy.
