This fatal shooting took place in Ecuador
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on March 5, 2020 at 14:08
- 2 min read
- By AFP South Africa, Tendai DUBE
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
The post, archived here, has been shared more than 760 times since it was published on February 26. The CCTV footage shows two armed assailants walking onto a pavement from the road and abruptly shooting a man several times at close range while he dines at an outdoor restaurant with two other people.
The caption simply says: “Incident in Durban”.
Durban is a large sub-tropical city in South Africa on the eastern seaboard.
On closer inspection, the recording appears to have been edited, with a poorly dubbed sound that fails to synchronise with the dramatic action on screen. Typically, CCTV footage does not record audio, either.
The date and time have also been cropped from the frame.
While the video doesn’t offer enough clues to pinpoint where the shooting took place, comments in response to the post indicate that some believe it happened in South America.
One user shares a link to a news article, headlined: “Singer Shot Dead, Riddled With Bullets Outside Of Seafood Restaurant In Guayaquil, Ecuador”.
The story describes how Promedio 20 singer Jorge Fernando Lino ‘Vanilla’ Macas was shot dead while eating with friends in Guayaquil, the second-largest city in Ecuador. It shares another CCTV camera angle of the shooting, as well as a clear view of the date: January 2, 2020.
A basic internet search of his name finds several articles in Spanish (examples here and here) describing the incident.
According to Ecuadorian daily newspaper El Universo, Marcas had an extensive criminal record and was in detention until last year, after he and three others were arrested in 2018 with 800 kilos of cocaine. He was declared innocent after a lengthy trial, while the others were sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
