World Athletics Championships medallist Alex Quinonez murdered in Ecuador

The 32-year-old was shot multiple times along with a friend.

Alex Quiñónez was a 200-metre runner. (Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Ecuadorian sprinter and World Athletics Championships bronze medallist Alex Quinonez has been murdered in his home city.

The 32-year-old was shot dead by a group of unknown assailants outside a shopping centre in Colinas de la Florida, a suburb of the port city of Guayaquil in the west of the country, according to local reports. Friend and singer Jojairo Arcalla was also fatally wounded in the same incident. Both Quinonez and Arcalla were shot multiple times and died instantly.

Quinonez’s death was confirmed online by Roberto Ibanez, President of the Guayas Sports Federation. “My heart is totally shattered, I can’t find words to describe the emptiness I feel,” he wrote on Twitter. “I cannot believe it, until when are we going to continue living so much evil and insecurity! Rest in peace dear Alex, I will miss you all my life.”

At the 2019 World Athletics Championships held in Qatar Quinonez took bronze in the 200m event behind the USA’s Noah Lyle and Canadian Andre De Grasse, and finished seventh in the final of the same event at the London 2012 Olympics. He had personal bests of 10.09s for the 100m and 19.87 for the 200m.

The Kenyan long-distance runner Agnes Tirop, who finished fourth at the Tokyo Olympics earlier this summer, was murdered earlier this month at her home in the town of Iten. Her husband Emmanuel Rotich was detained by police after a search operation.