Miguel Uribe, the Colombian senator and presidential hopeful who was shot in the head at a campaign event in June, has died, his wife has confirmed. The 39-year-old opposition candidate with the rightwing Centro Democrático party was shot twice in the head and once in the leg during a campaign stop two months ago while vying for his party’s nomination for the 2026 elections. He spent nine weeks in intensive care and had several surgeries before succumbing to his injuries early on Monday.
In a statement posted online, his wife, María Claudia Tarazona, wrote: “I ask God to show me the way to learn to live without you. Rest in peace, love of my life, I will take care of our children.” She added: “Wait for me, because when I fulfil my promise to our children, I will come looking for you and we will have our second chance.” Six people have been arrested in connection with the 7 June shooting, including a teenage boy identified as the alleged gunman. In footage of his arrest, the teenager was heard shouting that he had been hired by a local drug dealer and claiming “I did it for money for my family”.
Authorities have stressed they are pursuing the “intellectual authors” of the attack, and at least three adults are facing charges of using a minor to commit a crime. Colombia’s national police director, Carlos Fernando Triana, said another arrested man, Élder José Arteaga Hernández, known as El Costeño, was among those who had orchestrated the attack. The defence ministry has offered a 3bn peso (about £550,000) reward for information leading to the identification and capture of the culprits, and said the US, Britain and the United Arab Emirates were helping with the investigation.
The assassination was the worst incident of political violence in Colombia in two decades and has reignited fears of a return to the country’s bloody past. Colombia’s leftwing president, Gustavo Petro, offered his condolences to Uribe’s family, saying: “Life is above any ideology.” Isaac Morales, of the Bogotá-based Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, said: “With Uribe Turbay’s death, democracy in Colombia is lost and the electoral outlook for 2026 is very uncertain.” Uribe, whose mother was killed by the Medellín cartel in 1991, was a grandson of former president Julio César Turbay Ayala and enjoyed a rapid political rise. He entered politics as a Bogotá councillor aged 25 and by 2022 had secured the highest number of votes within the conservative Democratic Centre party.
