![](\"http:\/\/arewa.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Ex-President-shoots-self-dead-to-avoid-arrest.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nGarcia, who had repeatedly denied wrongdoing, was 69, NAN reports.<\/p>\n
President Martin Vizcarra said on Twitter that he was \u201cconsternated\u201d by Garcia\u2019s death, and sent his condolences to his family members.<\/p>\n
Garcia shot himself in the head after police arrived at his home to arrest him in connection with a bribery investigation, the interior ministry said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGarcia, 69, underwent emergency surgery at the Casimiro Ulloa hospital and suffered three cardiac arrests,\u2019\u2019 Health Minister Zulema Tomas said in broadcast comments.<\/p>\n
Garcia was one of nine people a judge ordered to be arrested in connection with an investigation into bribes distributed by Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction company.<\/p>\n
Local TV channel America reported Garcia was in a coma and showed images of his son, supporters and lawmakers arriving at the hospital, where police in riot gear stood by.<\/p>\n
A skilled orator who led Peru\u2019s once-powerful Apra party for decades, Garcia governed as a nationalist from 1985 to 1990 before remaking himself as a free-market proponent and winning another five-year term in 2006.<\/p>\n
He had denied wrongdoing involving Odebrecht and blamed his legal troubles on political persecution.<\/p>\n
\u201cOthers might sell out, not me,\u201d Garcia said in broadcast comments on Tuesday, repeating a phrase he has used frequently as his political foes became ensnared in the Odebrecht investigation.<\/p>\n
Interior Minister Carlos Moran said at a news conference that Garcia had told police he needed to call his attorney after they arrived at his home in Lima to arrest him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe entered his room and closed the door behind him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin a few minutes, a shot from a firearm was heard, and police forcibly entered the room and found Mr. Garcia sitting with a wound in his head,\u201d Moran said.<\/p>\n
In 2018, Garcia asked Uruguay for political asylum after he was banned from leaving the country to keep him from fleeing or obstructing the investigation, while Uruguay rejected the request.<\/p>\n
Garcia would have been the third former president in Peru to have been jailed in the Odebrecht case.<\/p>\n
Ollanta Humala spent nine months in pre-trial detention in 2017 to 2018 and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was arrested without charges recently.<\/p>\n
A fourth former president, Alejandro Toledo, is fighting extradition from California after a judge in Peru ordered him jailed for 18 months in connection with Odebrecht in 2017.<\/p>\n
However they have all denied wrongdoing in connection with Odebrecht.<\/p>\n
In Peru, criminal suspects can be ordered to spend up to three years in jail before trial if prosecutors can show they have evidence that likely would lead to a conviction and the suspect would likely flee or try to interfere in the investigation.\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Peru\u2019s former President, Alan Garcia died in a hospital in Lima, on Wednesday after shooting himself, as police arrived at his house to arrest him in connection with a bribery probe, authorities said. Garcia, who had repeatedly denied wrongdoing, was 69, NAN reports. President Martin Vizcarra said on Twitter that he was \u201cconsternated\u201d by Garcia\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[11627,11099],"class_list":["post-108287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-garcia","tag-peru"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/108288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}