Killing of 7-year-old girl stokes anger in Mexico
The killing of a 7-year-old girl on the southern outskirts of Mexico City has stoked rising anger over brutal slayings of women, including one found stabbed to death and skinned earlier this month.
The town prosecutor's office said Monday that investigators discovered a body found over the weekend as that of Fatima, a grade-school student who was taken by a stranger on Feb. 11. By law, prosecutors don't supply the name of victims.
Her body was found wrapped in a bag and abandoned in a rural area on Saturday and was discovered by genetic testing. The reason for death is not released. Five people have already been questioned in the event, and video of her abduction exists.
Mexico City prosecutor Ernestina Godoy said the girl's murder wouldn't normally go unpunished. The investigation is targeted on identifying the woman seen walking away from the school with the lady.
Prosecutors' spokesman Ulises Lara offered a $100,000 reward for information on the individual who picked her up when she left school.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum personally accompanied the girl's mother through the legal paperwork involved with filing charges and picking up the girl's body. "We will accompany the family, and justice must be done," Sheinbaum said.
The girl's mother, Maria Magdalena Antón, appeared angry and distraught outside prosecutors' offices. "Justice needs to be done, for my daughter and for all women," she said.
She said investigators made the family wait hours and travel across the location to even file a missing person report. Other relatives accused police of not acting quickly enough.
"She might have been found alive, but nobody taken notice of us," said Sonia López, the girl's aunt. López also said there have been longstanding questions about the mother's capability to care for her children, but that city health insurance and family welfare agencies hadn't helped them.
Later, friends and family gathered for a wake at the family's home to mourn the lady.
Many relatives and commentators needed urgent changes to primary school safety protocols. At government schools in urban areas of Mexico, children simply walk out on the road after classes end. Although their parents tend to be waiting outside, it isn't the school's responsibility to make certain someone is waiting to meet them.
The abduction and killing of the kid came just two days after Ingrid Escamilla, a young Mexico City resident, was allegedly murdered by a boyfriend.
The man, who has been arrested and purportedly confessed to killing Escamilla with a knife, mutilated her body and flushed part of her corpse in to the sewer.
Indignation grew after some local media published horrific photos of the skinned corpse, apparently leaked by city cops.
Protesters read a statement Friday saying, "It enrages us how Ingrid was killed, and the way the media put her body on display." On Monday afternoon, the Interior Ministry said in a statement that media shouldn't publish personal stats or images of children in relation to a crime whether they are the authors, victims or witnesses.
The Mexican capital has seen a series of angry demonstrations over killings of women over the past few months, including several where protesters have vandalized major monuments and buildings.
The killings have proved a politically difficult issue for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who said protests over the killings were an effort to distract attention from his social programs.
Last week, López Obrador showed little patience for many who questioned him about the government's commitment to fighting violence against women.
"This problem has been manipulated a lot in the media," the president said Monday, adding that "I don't want the issue merely to be women's killings."
On Monday, López Obrador defended his record, saying "we will work so that there won't be any longer women's killings."
But discussing protests last week over Escamilla's killing in which demonstrators spray-painted the doors and walls of the colonial-era National Palace, the president said, "They shouldn't paint our doors and walls."
