Three men have been arrested in the Dominican Republic after two radio journalists were fatally shot during a Facebook Live broadcast on Tuesday, according to local news reports.
Gunmen opened fire while one journalist, Luís Manuel Medina of Milenio Caliente, was reading the news at the FM radio station 103.5 in a shopping center in San Pedro de Macorís, east of Santo Domingo, the capital.
In a video uploaded to YouTube, shots can be heard in the background as Mr. Medina keeps reading. A woman is heard yelling off camera: “Shots! Shots! Shots!”
Mr. Medina looks up from the screen, and then the broadcast is abruptly cut.
His producer, Leo Martínez, also a director of Milenio Caliente (Hot Millennium), was killed in an adjacent office.
A woman identified in news reports as a station secretary was seriously injured in the attack and hospitalized, the authorities said. The police said the motive for the killings was unclear.
“The investigations have begun, and we will try, with all the means in our powers, to reach the truth,” Attorney General Jean Rodriguez told local reporters.
Killings of journalists are rare on the island, but some say they have received death threats and harassment in recent years, particularly over their coverage of the country’s immigration debate and for denouncing what they see as government hostility and persecution of Dominicans of Haitian descent.
The shootings also highlighted the challenges confronting Facebook after the live-streaming service was introduced for all users in April and a series of fatal shootings followed — a development the company is still struggling to cope with. (The New York Times)