Colombia Presidential Election: Miguel Uribe, the candidate shot in June, has died

Colombian presidential candidate and senator Miguel Uribe, who was shot in the head during a public meeting in Bogota in June , has died after spending two months in intensive care and undergoing several surgeries. "You will always be the love of my life. Thank you for a life full of love," his wife Claudia Tarazona wrote on her Instagram account on Monday, adding: "Rest in peace, love of my life, I will watch over our children."

Miguel Uribe, a 39-year-old conservative, was shot twice in the head and once in the leg by a 15-year-old suspected hitman while giving a speech in the capital on June 7. The clinic where he was hospitalized announced Saturday that his condition had "become critical again" following another brain hemorrhage.

"Today is a sad day for the country," Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez said in a message on the social network X on Monday. "Violence cannot continue to mark our destiny. Democracy is not built with bullets or blood, it is built with respect, with dialogue," she added.

A member of former right-wing President Alvaro Uribe's Democratic Center party, with whom he is not related, Miguel Uribe announced in October his intention to run in the May 2026 presidential election to succeed left-wing President Gustavo Petro. The attack rekindled fears of a return to the violence of the 1980s and 1990s, when political murders and attacks were commonplace. The teenager accused of carrying out the shootings is in custody, along with two other people suspected of complicity. All have been charged by prosecutors with attempted murder and illegal possession of weapons. None have admitted the charges.