Miguel Uribe Turbay, Colombian presidential senator and candidate dies, after the attack he suffered in Bogotá

The Colombian senator and presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay has died Monday as a result of the shots he received on Saturday, June 7, in Bogotá, while he intervened in a campaign act. The 39 -year -old politician was the son of the murdered journalist Diana Turbay and grandson of former president Julio César Turbay Ayala, and has died at the Santa Fe Foundation, the clinic to which she had been transferred on the day of the attack. His wife, María Claudia Tarazona, has confirmed the news on her Instagram account: “Our love transcends this physical plane. Wait for me, that when my promise with our children, I will go look for you and we will have our second chance,” he published on the social network.

Uribe’s health status had worsened in the early hours of Saturday. After a scheduled intervention in the early hour, he had presented “acute intracerebral bleeding” that forced another surgery, this time urgently. Hours later, in the afternoon, the clinic had reported that the condition of the senator was “extremely critical” for “a persistent cerebral edema” and “an intracerebral bleeding of difficult control.”

The Santa Fe Foundation has reported that Uribe Turbay died at 1.56 local time (8.56 Spanish peninsular time). “The team in charge of the care of Mr. Uribe Turbay in all areas of the institution worked tirelessly during these more than two months since its seriously injured income,” the institution said in a statement.

The former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, leader of the political party to which Uribe Turbay belonged, the Democratic Center, has lamented death: “Evil destroys everything, they killed hope,” said Uribe Vélez, without a family relationship with the senator and presidential candidate. The man who ruled Colombia between 2002 and 2010 was recently convicted of witness manipulation and fulfills a household sentence of 12 years waiting for a second instance decision. In the same sense, the former conservative president Iván Duque (2018-2022) has ruled, who has assured that “Colombia cries, but will not surrender to the criminals who turned off the life of an admirable young man.”

The politician of the right -wing party, the main opponent of the government of Gustavo Petro, received several shots while intervening in a public event in the Modelia neighborhood, to the west of the capital. Through several videos, the exact moment could be seen, around five in the afternoon, in which several shots are heard and Uribe falls to the floor from the improvised platform in which he talked about his campaign proposals. The politician’s escorts reacted immediately and took him to a nearby clinic. Hours later he was transferred in ambulance to the Santa Fe Clinic, in northern Bogotá, one of the best in the city, where he has remained in critical condition since then and where he has died.

Uribe Turbay’s sister has also lamented the death of the senator with the publication of a photo on Instagram, where they appear as children with her mother, Diana Turbay, a renowned journalist who was kidnapped by the drug lords led by Pablo Escobar and died in a rescue attempt. “I am sure that our mother, who loves you so much, receives you today with open arms,” said María Carolina Hoyos Turbay.

The authorities almost immediately captured a child under 14 as a material responsible for the attack. The investigations continue, there are already two more detainees, and the President of the Republic has said that no hypothesis is ruled out.

The attack on the candidate has shocked a country that immediately rolled up the murders that sowed terror in the late 1980s and the beginning of the ninety presidential and political candidates recognized, such as Bernardo Jaramillo, Carlos Pizarro or the father of the current mayor, Luis Carlos Galán. The senator leaves his wife María Claudia Tarazona, three daughters of her that he had welcomed as a father and a four -year -old son. At that age, Uribe Turbay lost his mother, Diana Turbay.

Uribe Turbay was a lawyer at the University of Los Andes with Master in Harvard Public Administration. He showed his political vein from a young age. With only 25 years, in 2012, he launched and was elected councilor of Bogotá by the Liberal Party, his grandfather and one of the two formations of traditional Colombian bipartisanship. In his four -year period in that position he stood out as one of the most critical voices of the then mayor and today president, by Gustavo Petro, and a rising figure of the political right.

The United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has expressed his “deep sadness” for the “tragic death of the Colombian senator”: “United States sympathizes with her family and the Colombian people, both in her duel and demanding justice for those responsible,” he published in his X account.

From the Senate, Uribe was consolidated as one of the main voices of the opposition to President Gustavo Petro, with a speech focused on the defense of security and institutions, critical of the total peace policy with which the Government has tried to negotiate in parallel with the different illegal groups of the country, and in general, the presidential proposals.