The director of the Litoral Penitentiary, considered the most dangerous prison in Ecuador, was shot dead on Thursday while traveling in a vehicle on the Daule road, three kilometers from the institution where she worked. María Daniela Icaza was traveling in the passenger seat when she was intercepted by armed hitmen who shot her. The Penitentiary, located on the outskirts of Guayaquil, is one of the most populated prisons in the country. It has been the scene of the worst massacres, with the murder of nearly 200 prisoners. The country’s penitentiary system is intervened by the Armed Forces, following a decree of internal armed conflict issued by Daniel Noboa on January 9 to control the simultaneous takeover of seven prisons in a series of violent events that included the assault on a television channel that was broadcasting a live newscast.
The driver of the vehicle, attacked around six in the evening, is an administrative officer of the National Service for the Care of Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), the institution in charge of the country’s prison system. He was injured and taken to a health centre. The information was slow to be confirmed by the SNAI, which had initially reported that the director was hospitalised and had to deny its statement after the Police published on the social network X that the director had been murdered and that they were carrying out investigative proceedings at the crime scene.
This is the second fatal attack against a prison director in two weeks. On September 3, the head of the prison in the province of Sucumbíos, located in the Amazon, was shot 20 times while traveling in a vehicle. Both officials, who held high-risk positions, did not have security or traveled in armored trucks. In December 2022, Santiago Loza, director of the El Inca prison, located north of Quito, was also shot dead while traveling in his vehicle. Just three months later, the director of the women’s prison in Guayaquil, Michelle Mayorga, who had only been in office for a month, was the victim of an attack from which she managed to escape alive.
The Litoral Penitentiary has been the center of operations for gangs that have divided the pavilions according to the gang they belong to. From there, riots were organized that ended in bloody massacres. The Noboa government has claimed to have control of the prisons with the intervention of the military; however, crimes against officials who work in the penitentiary system have not ceased. On August 31, two prison officers were murdered on their way to the prison complex. “On the way to the center, on the road to Daule near the Guayas Social Rehabilitation Center No. 4, the employees were victims of a criminal attack that caused their death,” published in a statement, without further explanation, the SNAI.
