Two unidentified men riding a motorcycle on February 7, 2017, shot at Isabel Prieto Fernández, a reporter with the Uruguayan weekly Caras y Caretas, as she was driving to her home in Montevideo from the beachside town of El Pinar, according to press reports.
A 9mm bullet grazed Prieto Fernández’s head, but she escaped with minor injuries only, according to press reports. She stopped driving and reported the incident when she saw a police car. She was taken to the Sanatorio Americano Hospital in Montevideo, according to a report in Caras y Caretas.
Speaking at the Uruguayan Press Association’s office in Montevideo on February 9, Prieto Fernández said the assailants had not tried to stop her car, and that she did not think they were trying to rob her, according to a report in the newspaper Diario El Pueblo. An editorial in Caras y Caretas said that the attack had the characteristics of attempted murder, not a robbery, although the newspaper could not completely dismiss the possibility that the assailants had been trying to rob the journalist.
Caras y Caretas reported that Interior Minister Eduardo Bonomi and national police director Mario Layera told Prieto Fernández and members of the Uruguayan Press Association that police had not ruled out any possible motive, but that they were leaning toward the hypothesis that the attack had been a botched robbery.
Prieto Fernández covers general news for the newspaper. The day before the attack, she wrote about her experience unsuccessfully seeking information from police about a murder case.