Ecuadorian police said on Wednesday that Mario Pineida, a 33-year-old Barcelona de Guayaquil defender, was shot dead in an apparent attack as violence escalates in the Andean nation.
Another person whom police did not identify was also killed in the incident, and a third was wounded.
Ecuador’s Interior Ministry confirmed the death of Mario Pineida without providing details. Barcelona de Guayaquil said in a statement that Pineida’s death saddens its fans.
Pineida started his professional career at Independiente del Valle, where he played from 2010 to 2015. He then moved to the club of the coastal city of Guayaquil in 2016 and won two league titles there. The defender also had a brief spell at Brazil’s Fluminense in 2022.
Ecuadorian media reported that the incident took place in the Samanes region in the northern end of Guayaquil, which lies 265 kilometres (165 miles) southwest of the capital, Quito.
Ecuador is expected to have its most violent year on record with more than 9,000 homicides, according to the Ecuadorian Observatory of Organised Crime. That figure was at 7,063 violent deaths last year and a then-record 8,248 in 2023.
President Daniel Noboa has pledged to fight criminal organisations that have expanded their operations in Ecuadorian territory in connection with international drug cartels.
In November, a 16-year-old footballer of Independiente del Valle died from a stray bullet, also in Guayaquil. Two months earlier, Maicol Valencia and Leandro Yépez, both players of Exapromo Costa, and Jonathan González, of 22 de Junio, died from gunshot wounds.
