A black Mercedes-Benz stopped on the shoulder of the Xalapa-Veracruz highway, in the eastern state of Veracruz, held the body of Zenyazen Roberto Escobar García, a 42-year-old Mexican federal deputy for the governing Morena party, who was found slumped inside on Friday, September 4, 2026, with at least one gunshot wound to the head. The case remains open, but death by suicide is where its principal lines of investigation point, Mexico’s federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) said on September 10.
A passing motorist called in a car stopped on the shoulder of Federal Highway 140 near Chichicaxtle, and the body turned up in the community of La Gloria, in the municipality of Puente Nacional. Prosecutors, forensic experts and Ministerial Police officers worked the scene. Veracruz state Attorney General Lisbeth Aurelia Jiménez confirmed the death, saying only that the investigation file was being compiled.
The lawmaker’s vehicle showed no signs of violence, Veracruz Secretary of Government Ricardo Ahued Bardahuil said at a news conference. “It wasn’t an attack, because the car is off to the side,” Ahued said, adding that he did not want to get ahead of an investigation still under way. Footage aired by Mexican news television showed Escobar slightly slumped in the driver’s seat of his Mercedes-Benz with a black firearm tucked between his legs, and the FGR’s account likewise placed the weapon between his legs inside the vehicle. Bodyguards usually accompanied Escobar because of his office, yet early reports noted he was traveling without them.
Questions Still Open in the Investigation
Because Escobar held federal office, the FGR announced on X that it was taking over the case. She had asked the office to report as the investigation advances, President Claudia Sheinbaum said while touring San Luis Potosí. Several lines of inquiry were open, Veracruz Gov. Rocío Nahle said on September 5, urging the public to wait for the FGR’s report. She returned to the subject two days later, on September 7, telling the local program “En Contacto” that the Mercedes-Benz had been locked from the inside with its door locks engaged. A single bullet was involved, she said, and investigators recovered one casing inside the car.
Examiners finished an autopsy in the early hours of Saturday, September 5. Examinations in forensics, ballistics, genetics and toxicology, along with interviews with people close to Escobar in both his personal and work spheres, pointed to suicide, the FGR said on September 10, adding that it would not rule out other motives as the investigation continues. The office, headed by Ernestina Godoy, said the work ran through the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Veracruz, part of the Fiscalía Especializada de Control Regional (FECOR), and amounted to more than 150 investigative acts, inspections and expert examinations carried out in coordination with the Veracruz state attorney general’s office. A multidisciplinary team from the FGR’s Centro Federal Pericial Forense produced findings in medicine, criminalistics, forensic ballistics, genetics, forensic chemistry, lofoscopy, forensic photography, computing, land traffic, field criminalistics and toxicology.
The FGR said the indirect victims of the incident cooperated in a decisive way with the investigation, and it described the investigations as exhaustive and the expert examinations as scrupulous. From the first steps, it said, the safeguarding, collection, securing, recording and analysis of evidence were carried out in strict accordance with regulations and protocols.
The family would wait for the autopsy findings before discussing the circumstances, Escobar’s widow, magistrate Liliana López Coronado, told local media, asking that her husband be remembered for his work in the teaching movement.
Farewells in Xalapa and Río Blanco
Nahle, former Gov. Cuitláhuac García Jiménez, relatives, party members and union groups gathered on September 5 at the Bosques del Recuerdo funeral home in Xalapa to mourn him. Nahle and Cuitláhuac García had not appeared publicly together since December 2024. On the casket, mourners laid a white cowboy hat, an echo of the one Escobar wore in the Chamber of Deputies.
Rain fell at his burial on September 6 in the municipal cemetery in Río Blanco. Escobar belonged to Cuitláhuac García’s inner circle, and a Facebook post from the former governor described his deep mourning for a friend and fellow party member alongside whom he had spent years struggling and working for the people of Veracruz. Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s floor leader in the Chamber of Deputies, posted condolences to Escobar’s family, staff and associates on social media, calling the death a loss for the parliamentary group and for the district he represented.
Monreal, who chairs the chamber’s Political Coordination Board, said on September 8 that parliamentary group leaders had decided not to create a special commission looking into the death, preferring to wait until the FGR established what happened. In its place, the chamber staged a formal tribute on September 9, opening with a minute of silence and closing with a minute of applause. Escobar’s widow, daughters, mother and sister stood at the foot of the rostrum. Sergio Gil Rullán, a Movimiento Ciudadano deputy who also represents Veracruz, told the floor that the 66th Legislature had become the most violent since post-revolutionary Mexico because of the deaths in its ranks. The death could not be left in the realm of versions and speculation, PRI deputy Lorena Piñón said.
From Telesecundaria Classrooms to Congress
Escobar was born June 4, 1984. He took a degree in communication sciences at the Universidad de Sotavento and a master’s in education sciences, started in school supervision for state telesecundarias in 2007 and from 2009 was teaching in Veracruz classrooms. Educación, Resistencia y Dignidad Magisterial, a movement linked to the dissident teachers’ union CNTE, took him in during 2015, and he emerged as leader of the Movimiento Magisterial Popular Veracruzano, which opposed the federal education reform. He won a seat in the Veracruz state congress in 2016 and coordinated Morena’s caucus there; in December 2018, Cuitláhuac García named him state secretary of education. In 2024 voters sent him to the federal Chamber of Deputies for Veracruz’s 16th district, based in Córdoba. For years he was also dogged by images from his early adulthood, said to show him offering private dances under the name “Tarzán Boy” in bars around Orizaba. Any work as a stripper he denied, telling an internet interviewer in October 2017 that bodybuilding and fitness had taken up 11 years of his life.
On May 28 an extraordinary session on the floor of the Chamber saw him confront Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) deputy Carlos Gutiérrez Mancilla, and video of the clash spread widely online, drawing national attention. Gutiérrez Mancilla shouted an insult that referred to those old images; Escobar removed his hat and took a fighting stance before other deputies separated them. Ana Isabel González, another PRI deputy, asked that Escobar take a drug test, and opposition legislators backed the request on suspicion he had been drinking. Monreal denied that Escobar was drunk, attributing his behavior to exhaustion after the marathon session. The Chamber reported no sanctions.
A Violent Backdrop Ahead of the 2027 Vote
The death lands as Mexico heads toward elections on June 6, 2027, to renew mayoral, state legislative, city council and gubernatorial posts. The human rights organization Data Civica recorded at least 30 incidents of “political-criminal violence” across 11 states in July 2026, including 14 homicides, and defines the category as threats, murders, armed attacks, assassination attempts, disappearances and kidnappings. Another member of the same legislature, Veracruz deputy Benito Aguas Atlahua, was shot in the Sierra de Zongolica in December 2024 and died hours later.
Asked about the case at her morning news conference on September 10, Sheinbaum said the prosecutor’s office would have to be the one to report and that it already had some results. “Our condolences to the family and to all the friends and colleagues,” she added. The FGR released its findings that afternoon.