Mother-in-law captured abroad after cold-blooded execution of beauty queen daughter-in-law
The mother-in-law of a former Mexican beauty queen has been arrested after she fled the country following her cold-blooded execution-style murder.
Erika Maria Herrera, 62, was captured on the run in Venezuela on Wednesday in connection with the April 15 murder of 27-year-old Carolina Flores Gomez in her Mexico City apartment.
Gomez, who won the Miss Teen Universe 2017 crown in Baja California, was shot 12 times, six in the head and six in the chest. Blog del Narco reports.
After Gomez’s murder, authorities focused the investigation on Herrera and placed him on Interpol’s Red Notice list. Mexico City’s attorney general said he assisted Interpol in his capture. According to Reporte Indigo.
Prosecutors now want to extradite Herrera to Mexico. Diario Puntal reports.
Herrera’s arrest came after video was posted online showing Herrera following Gomez into a room in her apartment before several gunshots and screams were heard.
Gomez, who won the Miss Teen Universe title in Baja California in 2017, was shot 12 times, six in the head and six in the chest.
According to Puntual, Gomez had recently celebrated her birthday as she was born in Ensenada on April 4, 1999.
In the video, Gomez’s husband, Alejandro Gomez, can be seen walking. In the frame of the video, she is carrying her eight-month-old baby and asking her mother in Spanish, ‘What was that?’ he asks. ‘What crazy thing did you do?’
Herrera replied: ‘Nothing. It made me angry.”
Gomez calmly asks him: ‘What’s your problem, it’s my family.’
Herrera replied: ‘You are mine and he stole you.’
She then allegedly replied: ‘Nothing, it just made me angry’ and stressed that Alejandro was her son before fleeing the building.
Alejandro’s decision to allow his mother to escape, then wait until the next day to report the murder to authorities, also prompted prosecutors to investigate whether there was a cover-up in the murder.
Gomez had recently celebrated her birthday as she was born in Ensenada on April 4, 1999. Punctual reported.
Baja California Governor Marina del Pilar Avila told reporters that the investigation into Gomez’s death is a top priority.
“No crime against a woman should go unpunished,” Avila told a group of reporters, according to the news outlet. ‘Our thoughts are with his family at this devastating time.’
According to Puntual, state prosecutor María Elena Andrade Ramírez said close communication was established between authorities to prioritize the investigation.
Erika Maria Herrera, 62, was arrested in Venezuela on Wednesday for the murder of 27-year-old Carolina Flores Gomez in her Mexico City apartment on April 15.
Authorities also investigated whether the murder was covered up because Gomez’s husband allowed his mother to flee the scene and waited a day before calling authorities.
The beauty queen’s tragic death comes at a time of social unrest in Mexico, which advocates say is an epidemic of violence against women and a lack of justice for attackers.
Civil organizations are pressuring prosecutors to reclassify the case as femicide. United Nations Puntual reported that UN Women defines it as “intentional killing with a gender-related motivation.”
The UN agency said last November that femicide ‘is different from murder and the motivation may not be gender-related’.
He continued: ‘Femicide is caused by discrimination against women and girls, unequal power relations, gender stereotypes or harmful social norms.
‘It is the most extreme and brutal manifestation of violence against women and girls, occurring through a continuum of multiple and interrelated forms of violence at home, in the workplace, at school or in public and online spaces.’
According to the agency, such behavior includes ‘intimate partner violence, sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence, harmful practices, and human trafficking.’
