By Mariangel Moro Colmenarez.
The murder and rape of two young girls have shocked Venezuela, not to mention the small town of La Mision in the Venezuelan Llanos, even when taking into consideration that the crisis-stricken country has one of the highest murder rates on the planet.
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Police told reporters they are investigating both crimes separately, “but we are not ruling out anything at this point,” a law enforcement source told El Pitazo.
The bodies of two young women – one of them still a minor- who had been missing since Sunday, February 21, were found in La Mision town, municipality of Turen in Portuguesa.
It all took place in the same town, but they went missing in different sections. The disappearances and the finding of the corpses were registered some 30 hours apart, law enforcement reported.
Death of a minor
Eliannys Andreina Martinez Roñoz, 17-years-old, was last seen on Sunday, February 21, when she returned home after attending a congregation of evangelical Christians in the same locality, a rural area of one of the agricultural municipalities of the region.
Her body reappeared around noon of this Monday, February 22, in a vacant lot known as La Tabacalera, next to the municipal headquarters of the Universidad Nacional Experimental de Los Llanos Ezequiel Zamora.
Next to the corpse, which showed evidence of physical and sexual aggression, police located a shoe of the victim, two cell phone cases, a condom with presumed seminal liquid, and tree vines. Police have so far determined that she was strangled.
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After the finding, another young woman, 20, was reported missing in the same rural town. Eduarlys Falcon was her name, and news of her disappearance went out to law enforcement and social media.
About Eduarlys, authorities revealed that she left her residence at dawn on Monday 22, aboard a bicycle to travel to a gym in the area.
Eduarlys was located at approximately 5:00 pm of this Tuesday 23, next to Las Marias river, in the same parish of the Turen municipality, just 35 hours after the first female murdered body got found.
Next to her body, the police located a pair of shoes without laces, a sandal, socks, and strands of bejuco, the type of local tree vine that farmers sometimes mistake for snakes.
The Homicide Division of the Cicpc national criminal police, out of its Acarigua, Portuguesa base, is heading the investigations.
The preliminary examination of the body of the 20-year-old girl also showed signs of having died from mechanical asphyxia and sexually abused. However, a full forensic medical report confirming the cause of death is not yet available.
Both girls had an indentation, a groove, on their necks and abrasions on their legs. The murders have incensed people in Portuguesa, who have taken to social networks demanding justice.
Oscar Angel Valero, Secretary of Citizen Security of the local Government, confirmed, through the local media, that the police agencies are dedicated to the investigations to find those responsible and to determine if both facts are related.
In less than 24 hours, in the north of Portuguesa, there have been three female murders. This Monday, February 22, a truck driver killed his ex-partner with two shots during an argument.
The fact occurred in the house of the man in Araure. The victim was identified as Carmín Yohanny Sosa, a 33-year-old businesswoman. Minutes after perpetrating the crime, the murderer, Jhon Kelle Luques, also took his own life with a shot in the head.
