Colombia Presidential Hopeful Dies After Being Shot

Miguel Uribe Turbay, a Colombian senator and presidential hopeful who was hospitalized after being shot at a campaign event more than two months ago, has died, his wife announced on Monday.

Uribe, 39, a potential presidential candidate from the right-wing opposition, was shot in the head during a rally in Bogota, Colombia’s capital, on June 7.

The hospital where Uribe was being treated, the Santa Fe de Bogota Foundation, said the senator died in the early hours of Monday morning. On Saturday, it had warned that he was in “critical condition” due to a “hemorrhagic episode in the central nervous system.”

“I ask God to show me the way to learn to live without you,” Maria Claudia Tarazona, Uribe’s wife, wrote on social media. “Rest in peace… I will take care of our children.”

Ivan Duque Marquez, Colombia’s president from 2018 to 2022, paid tribute to Uribe, saying that “terrorism” had snatched from the country “an upright and transparent leader.”

“Colombia mourns, but it will not surrender to the criminals who took the life of an admirable young man,” said Duque, who led the Democratic Center party, which Uribe also represented.

Another former president, Alvaro Uribe, who is no relation to the senator, said: “Evil destroys everything; they killed hope. May Miguel’s struggle be a light that illuminates the right path for Colombia.”

Police have arrested six people in connection with Uribe’s shooting, including a 15-year-old boy who was charged with attempted homicide. Later, the prosecutor in the case claimed that the minor had become “immersed in a hitman network.” All of the accused have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.

The killing of Uribe, who came from a prominent Colombian political family, is for many in Colombia a grisly echo of the country’s history of political violence.

Uribe’s mother, Diana Turbay, was a journalist kidnapped by drug traffickers from the Medellin cartel under Pablo Escobar. She was murdered during a rescue operation in 1991. Uribe was then raised by his father, a city councillor in Bogota.

Uribe, a Harvard graduate, began his career in local Bogota politics, before entering the Senate in 2022. Last year, at the site where his mother was murdered, Uribe announced his candidacy for the 2026 presidential elections.

“I could have grown up seeking revenge, but I decided to do the right thing: forgive, but never forget,” he said at the time.

Uribe’s grandfather, Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala, served as president from 1978 to 1982, and his grandmother, Nydia Quintero Turbay de Balcazar, was the founder of Solidarity with Colombia, an activist group that promoted workers’ rights in the country.