When I saw the pictures of Susana Flores Gámez, who boasted the beauty queen title of Mujer Sinaloa 2012 and who represented Mexico in China in the Miss Oriental Tourism pageant just this past May, as she smiled for the cameras in her imposing crown, I couldn’t believe what happened to the beautiful 22-year-old woman: She died in the middle of a shootout between Mexican military forces and a group of armed members of a drug cartel. I just found it so hard to believe that such a young, promising woman had died in such a violent way.
Flores Gámez died this past Saturday in a town in Sinaloa, Mexico, and even though at first authorities didn’t release much information about the shooting (they only confirmed that she and her boyfriend had died in the gun fight, as they were caught in the middle), some unofficial versions stated that the military officers were attacked by a group of men while they were in the middle of a recon operation and that it’s presumed the beauty queen’s boyfriend was one of the armed men who attacked the military, according to Mexican magazine Proceso.
