Assassination of Marvin Gaviria

Assassination of Marvin Gaviria
The body of President Marvin Gaviria seconds after being shot by a sniper surrounded by paramedics and witnesses.
Date September 29th, 1972 Location Congressional Hall, Tofino, Zamastan Result Death of Marvin Gaviria Massive manhunt with no perpetrator arrested Political turmoil engulfs the nation of Zamastan Elene Abotsford is elected as the 7th President of Zamastan
Casualties and losses
Marvin Gaviria

Marvin Gaviria, the 6th President of Zamastan, was assassinated on September 29th, 1972, during his innagural celebration speech in front of Congressional Hall in Tofino, Zamastan. The perpetrators of the assassination were never caught, and it remained the greatest mystery of Zamastan history.

In October of 2019, the Zamastanian Intelligence Service announced that they had concluded that a team of 2 Mayottean assassins had killed the President with the motive being anger against Gaviria's anti-seperatist policies towards the provinces of Mayotte, Aunistria, and Alutia.

Background

On September 22nd, 1972, Marvin Gaviria won his 13th term, and his approval rating was sitting at 94%, the highest of any president in Zamastanian history. Amid a rising capitalist economy and flourishing republican styled government, Gaviria was one of the most popular politicians in the entire country. He was also coming off the heels of a military victory in the Tariel War, which served as a boost to his popularity.

In 1970, the communist government of Beleroskov had been hit aggressively by sanctions placed on them by Gaviria's administration. A similar situation had unfolded with the government of Yuan. Both nations conspired behind closed doors to assassinate Gaviria and other key Zamastanian government officials, often by enlisting angered resistance members in the separatist movements in Zamastan's eastern provinces. Their plots were never revealed to the public or picked up by Zamastanian intelligence. Experts believe that the failure to detect the many plots against Gaviria was the Z.I.S.' biggest ever blunder.

Previous Assassination Attempt

Gaviria had been the target of a Lauchenoirian-sponsored assassination attempt during his re-election campaign. On July 6th, 1972, a man shot at Gaviria's open-top car as his motorcade passed through Emerald, Pahl. Gaviria escaped unharmed, but the Governor of Pahl and two bodyguards were injured, and one later died. The would-be assassin turned the gun on himself and committed suicide. At the time, the assailant was believed to be a member of the radical Catholic Pahlan National Liberation Army, which had long been in armed protest against the Zamastanian government and society in the Pahlan Insurgencies. His connection to Lauchenoiria was never discovered.

Assassination

On September 29th, 1972, President Gaviria stood in front of a large crowd on the stairs of Congressional Hall in Tofino, to give an inaugural celebration speech. About 0.9 miles northwest of Congressional Hall and across Gaviria Park (at the time, known as Capitol Park), three men had arrived at an under-construction 50-story skyscraper. The two men were Mayottean mercenaries, and one was a selected hired observer. The Mayotteans climbed the interior of the building to the forty-third floor. One of the men was carrying a heavy-sniper rifle, but the Z.I.S. is not sure which one fired the fatal shot. Constructing a sniper nest in haste with bricks, nylon covering, and wooden planking, the sniper team would have had to calculate wind, distance, and the arc of the bullet path in order to hit Gaviria, nearly a mile away in a large crowd.

At roughly 2:12 PM, the sniper fired a single bullet. As he addressed the crowd nearly three minutes into his speech, Marvin grabbed his chest, buckled forward to the podium, and collapsed to the stage. Seconds later, the bang of a sniper rifle bore through the air and the crowd began to scatter. As paramedics and witnesses tended to the President, they soon realized that he had been killed at the moment he was hit with the bullet. A large, inch and a half circumference hole had ripped through Gaviria's upper chest and exited out his middle-back near the bottom of his shoulder blade.

Around an hour later, authorities found the sniper’s nest on the forty-third floor of the construction site. Security footage captured someone leaving the scene with the gun, but the perpetrator was never identified, the rifle was never recovered, and the case was never solved. It remained the greatest mystery of Zamastan history until 2019 when the perpetrators were identified from newly discovered tapes and eye-witness testimony from the construction site and people who were in Gaviria Park between the Congressional Hall and skyscraper.

Funeral

A Requiem Mass was celebrated for Gaviria at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle on October 1st, 1972. Afterwards, Kennedy was interred in a small plot, 20 by 30 ft., in Tofino National Cemetery. Over a period of three years (1972–1975), an estimated 16 million people visited his grave. On March 14, 1978, Gaviria's remains were disinterred and moved only a few feet away to a permanent burial plot and memorial.

The honor guard at Gaviria's graveside was requested by his wife, Padma.

Padma Gaviria and their two deceased minor children were later interred in the same plot.