Susy Aponte

Susy Ysabel Aponte Polo, the Peruvian journalist and regional politics candidate known across Ancash as La China Polo, was shot dead on Saturday, September 19, 2026, while campaigning at a market in the Andean city of Caraz. She was in her early forties. Local and international outlets reported that an alleged hitman fired at her during a Socios por Ancash campaign stop; several people with her were wounded, and Peru's National Police detained an armed man as a suspect shortly afterward.

Aponte Polo had built a following as an investigative journalist who focused on corruption, policing, and criminal networks in Ancash. In the days before she was killed she circulated a social media warning saying she had received death threats, and she accused senior police figures of links to the criminal organisation Los Pulpos. She had planned to publish further reporting on a rival local candidate. The Consejo de la Prensa Peruana (Peruvian Press Council) and electoral bodies including the JNE and ONPE condemned the killing and called for a full investigation so that the crime would not go unpunished.

Prosecutors initially opened a preliminary femicide inquiry through the specialised Huaylas office for violence against women, then reporting indicated the case was being treated as suspected contract killing (sicariato). By September 20, authorities said three people had been detained in connection with the attack, including an alleged shooter, a transporter, and a possible financier. The Interior Ministry also sent a specialised homicide team to Ancash.

Aponte Polo was running for regional governor of Ancash for the Socios por Ancash movement ahead of the October 4, 2026 elections. Colleagues and press-freedom advocates remembered her as a confrontational local reporter who used her platform China Polo Dominical and campaign appearances to press allegations that powerful interests preferred to keep quiet. Her exact birth date has not been confirmed in reputable English or Spanish wire reports, which give her age as 43 or 44; this memorial therefore records her death date from contemporaneous news without inventing a birth date.

The killing of a working journalist who was also on the ballot stunned Caraz and Huaraz and drew national attention to the risks facing reporters who cover organised crime in Peru's regions. Her story is remembered as that of a woman who kept reporting and campaigning after she said she had been threatened, and who died in public while doing both.