On Wednesday, the Michoacan's Attorney General Jose Martin Godoy Castro announced via statement that his investigation into the death of Yurecuaro mayoral candidate Enrique Hernandez has tied the local police chief, his deputy, as well as another underling to the political murder.

As reported by The Associated Press, Godoy Castro stated he would file charges of participation through omission in a homicide.

The prosecutor said that the suspected planners behind the attack on Hernandez compensated the local police for protection and then informed them to leave town on May 14 so that they could then proceed with murdering the candidate.

According to Godoy Castro, Hernandez’s life was in danger due to a disagreement over control of a sandbank.

The state prosecutor's office has stated that Hernandez was shot from a moving vehicle. Reportedly, three other people besides him were injured in the shooting.

This is the second time a mayoral candidate was killed in western Mexico this month. Ulises Fabian Quiroz was killed earlier in May in a shooting while running for mayor in Chilapa town in the state of Guerrero, which is already notorious for the 43 students from a teachers college who went missing in September of last year.

As reported by the International Business Times, Hernandez was a candidate for Morena, which is a left-wing democratic socialist political party. Aside from his left-leaning politics, Hernandez was known to be a leader of his town's "self-defense force," a vigilante group formed by farmers in Michoacan back in 2013 in order to combat the Knights Templar drug cartel that was terrorizing the state by carrying out acts of murder, kidnapping, and extortion.

In recent months, both Michoacan and Guerrero have been suffering major drug gang related violence.