Long before the shooting death of women’s rights activist Isabel Cabanillas de la Torre in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, human rights attorneys had noted the rising trend of “femicides” in the border city.

The deaths and disappearances of women and girls in Juarez and in other parts of Mexico had once dominated international headlines. But in recent years, attention has evaporated.

Angelita Baeyens, the VP of international advocacy and litigation at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, has been trying to bring the issue back to the spotlight.

“This is certainly not the way we would hope to draw attention to violence against women and the epidemic of femicides in Mexico and the region,” Baeyens told NBC News. Cabanillas’ death is a blow to the “movement of courageous women activists, many of them mothers, sisters, and friends of victims of femicides in Mexico.”

Baeyens said it’s another example of the “terrible pattern” that continues to happen in Mexico, especially in Ciudad Juarez, of women who disappear and are later found murdered.

“It exposes the danger in which women human rights defenders working to combat violence operate,” she said.

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