‘The police just killed my dad’: Paraguay lawmaker dies in drug raid shoot-out

A deadly police raid on a prominent Paraguayan congressman’s home has exposed a web of politics and organised crime

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An ambulance carrying the body of Eulalio “Lalo” Gomez arrives at the local morgue in Asuncion on August 19. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:17pm, 20 Aug 2024

A predawn police raid targeting the home of a Paraguayan lawmaker in a notorious drug smuggling haven near the country’s border with Brazil turned into a chaotic shoot-out, authorities said, leaving the lawmaker dead and the nation on edge.

The killing on Monday of Eulalio “Lalo” Gomes, a 67-year-old rancher and lawmaker from Paraguay’s long-ruling Colorado party, also served as a grim reminder of the web of collusion between politicians’ families and organised crime in Paraguay, experts said.

“This is not an isolated case, on the contrary, it’s the continuation of many other cases linking politics to narco-trafficking and organised crime,” said Paraguayan lawyer and political analyst Leonardo Gómez Berniga.

Security forces equipped with firearms and search warrants arrived simultaneously at the separate homes of Gomes and his son, 32-year-old Alexandre Rodrigues Gomes, early Monday in the lush borderland to look for evidence in what authorities described as a wide-scale investigation into drug smuggling and money laundering in local real estate.

Officers said Gomes greeted them with a hail of gunfire. Police fired back, fatally wounding the conservative Colorado lawmaker.

“We have a community in turmoil, a public who needs answers,” Emiliano Rolón, Paraguay’s public prosecutor, said as he emerged from the morgue of Asunción, Paraguay’s steamy capital city some 276 miles (445km) southwest of Pedro Juan Caballero, the border outpost where the raid took place. “We’re dealing with organised crime, and that’s not an easy thing.”