Armando “Mando” Montano, a
22-year-old openly gay news summer intern for The Associated
Press, was found dead in Mexico City on Saturday, June 30.
According to the AP, Montano's body was
found in an elevator shaft of an apartment building in the Mexican
capital's Condesa neighborhood, near where he was living. Mexican
authorities are investigating. He was not working on an assignment
at the time of his death.
Montano arrive in Mexico City in June,
soon after graduating from Grinnell College in Iowa, where he earned
a bachelor's degree in Spanish. In the fall, he planned to attend
the University of Barcelona to pursue a master's degree in
journalism.
He covered the Iowa presidential
caucuses in December and January as a news intern for The New York
Times.
“Mando was a standout young
journalist, with a rare passion and exuberance for life and for
people,” Richard Berke, an assistant managing editor at The New
York Times, told the AP. “He accomplished so much and touched
so many in a short time, and his potential was truly limitless.”
“He absolutely loved journalism and
was soaking up everything he could,” said Marjorie Miller, AP's
Latin America editor based in Mexico City. “In his short time with
the AP, he won his way into everyone's hearts with his hard work, his
effervescence and his love of the profession.”
Montano's parents, Diane Alters and
Mario Montano, teach at Colorado College, a private liberal arts
college in Colorado Springs. He had no siblings.