Ecuador judge shot dead in Machala amid gang violence crackdown

Lady Pachar was shot dead while traveling by car to a gym in Machala, a killing that put Ecuador’s justice system squarely in the path of the country’s organized-crime war. The attack unfolded in the southwestern city, the capital of El Oro province on the border with Peru, where armed groups have increasingly tested the state’s reach.

Her two bodyguards were not with her when the shooting happened, a detail that has sharpened scrutiny of how judges are protected as threats against the judiciary mount. Police in Machala said Pachar was killed during a period of intense violence and instability, with the country still under a state of emergency declared to combat organized crime.

Ecuador’s Judicial Council called the killing a “serious attack against justice and the rule of law in Ecuador,” and warned that “the judiciary cannot carry out its work under intimidation or violence.” The statement reflected a wider alarm in the courts, where judges and prosecutors have become direct targets in a broader campaign of intimidation that now reaches into the institutions meant to uphold the law.

A police source said Pachar had received threats and was killed in retaliation for the release of gang members. That account points to the growing pressure on Ecuador’s justice officials, who are increasingly forced to operate amid threats, retaliation and heavily armed criminal networks that have expanded across the country.

The killing also fits a grim pattern. Human Rights Watch says at least 16 judges or prosecutors have been killed in Ecuador since 2022. Another judge was killed last October, when a gunman on a motorbike shot him while he was walking his children to school, a brazen attack that underscored how exposed members of the judiciary have become.

The broader security crisis has deepened alongside the assaults on the courts. Human Rights Watch said homicides in Ecuador rose sharply in 2025 and were close to the highest level ever recorded, reflecting how organized violence has seeped into everyday life as well as public institutions. Pachar’s killing is likely to intensify pressure on authorities to explain why a judge traveling in a city under emergency rule was left without her security detail, and whether Ecuador’s courts can remain independent when violence is working so close to the bench.