Mexico City, October 21 (RHC-EFE) – Four people are under arrest in connection with last week's killing of a rural police commander in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, state Attorney General Jose Martin Godoy said Monday.

Felipe Diaz, who headed the detachment of the Fuerza Rural in Coalcoman, was murdered because “his decision to step up enforcement in his jurisdiction threatened the interests of a local crime boss,” the attorney general told a press conference.

He said that the crime boss, his two sons and an associate offered a man 200,000 pesos (US$14,800) and a tow-truck to kill Diaz.

Diaz was shot on Friday and the commander died the following day at a hospital in Morelia, capital of Michoacan. The shooter remains at large.

Mexico created the Fuerza Rural earlier this year to bring under official control the armed militias that arose in Michoacan in early 2013 to battle the Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) drug cartel, which was terrorizing communities throughout the state.