Maria Susana Flores Gamez, 20, a Mexican beauty queen was killed in Mexico during a shootout. The incident happened in Sinaloa, and Gamez was the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa. She died during a shootout between the military and a group of suspected criminals, according to CNN.
Two other individuals were also killed during the incident and Sinaloa State Attorney General Marco Antonio Higuera said to CNN, "All we know is that it happened during a confrontation that the army had with criminals, and that she was with the group of criminals."
Organizers of the pageant she participated in said in a statement, "We are dismayed by the news -- a beautiful young person, happy, and with a big future ahead of her, " the pageant organizers said. "Rest in peace Susy."
The Associated Press reported that the shootout started when gunmen started shooting at Mexican military patrol. The military then chased and cornered the shooters into a safe house in the town of Mocorito.
The Author of the book "Miss Narco" which is about the ties between beauty pageants and drug cartels said to the AP that it was a recurrent theme.
"There is a relationship, sometimes pleasant and sometimes tragic, between organized crime and the beauty queens, the pageants, the beauty industry itself," Valdez said. "It is a question of privilege, power, money, but also a question of need," said Valdez. "For a lot of these young women, it is easy to get involved with organized crime, in a country that doesn't offer many opportunities for young people."
He added that sometimes drug traffickers intentionally seek out beauty queen while some modles and beauty queens also look for "narco" boyfriends.
"I once wrote about a girl I knew of who was desperate to get a narco boyfriend. She practically took out a classified ad saying 'Looking for a Narco'," he said to the AP.
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