Carabobo’s State police officers stand next to graffiti that reads in Spanish “Isabelica in war” during a opposition protest at Isabelica neighborhood outside Valencia, Venezuela in this March 15, 2014, photo. More than a dozen masked men on motorcycles roared through, shooting up a barricade and killing a university student and a 42-year-old man painting his house.VALENCIA, Venezuela – The masked gunmen emerged from a group of several dozen motorcycle-mounted government loyalists who were attempting to dismantle a barricade in La Isabelica, a working-class district of Valencia that has been a center of unrest since nationwide protests broke out last month.
The barricades’ defenders had been hurling rocks, sticks and other objects at the attackers, who included perhaps a dozen armed men, witnesses told The Associated Press.
Lisandro Barazarte, a photographer with the local newspaper, Notitarde, caught images of several of the men shooting into the crowd while steadying their firearms on their palms.
“They were practiced shooters,” Barazarte said. “More were armed, but didn’t fire.”
When it was over, two La Isabelica men were dead: a 22-year-old student, Jesus Enrique Acosta, and a little league baseball coach, Guillermo Sanchez. Witnesses told the AP the first was shot in the head, the second in the back. They said neither was at the barricades when he was killed.