A 14-year-old girl died in the middle of a shooting in the Unión y Progreso neighborhood of the Quinindé canton, which began at eleven o’clock at night on Monday, October 17.
The bullets were directed at the home of Mercedes Chumo, located next to the border of the La Aldea neighborhood. She says that she threw herself to the ground with her granddaughters to save her life and that she called the Police.
After this shooting, the Police raided five homes, including Mercedes and her relatives, on Wednesday, October 19.
“They tried to blackmail me and they wrote to me on WhatsApp,” a young account from Quinindé, canton of Esmeraldas where violent deaths are also on the rise
In the houses they found and confiscated, according to the institution’s bulletin, five motorcycles of different brands (four reported as stolen)five unbranded amplifier boxes, three black televisions of different brands, an induction cooker, a computer monitor, three unbranded black bulletproof vests, two sets of sinks, 87 transparent sleeves with a green vegetable substance (marijuana), 3 transparent sleeves with a white powdery substance (cocaine), 24 transparent sleeves with a beige powdery substance (base paste) and an unmarked 38 caliber revolver-type firearm.
The operation was called Fortaleza 78 and led to the arrest of two citizens allegedly engaged in motorcycle theft, illegal possession and carrying of firearms, illicit trafficking of controlled substances, among other crimes, according to the Police bulletin.
The detainees were identified as Raymon Z., 21 years old, and Michael M., 30 years old (registers an arrest warrant).
Mercedes affirms that the motorcycles were not in the raided houses and that the detainees did not live in them either.
He adds that the shooting on Monday, October 17, against his house was an act of intimidation in order to prevent him from continuing with the judicial process for the murder of his two daughters, which occurred last January.
Mercedes accuses alias pecueca and to others, who he says are part of the Los Tiguerones gang, of wanting to appropriate the La Aldea sector to operate with drug trafficking and other crimes.
The confrontation between gangs keeps the inhabitants of the Quinindé canton in suspense, where they are already registering 23 intentional homicides between January and August of this year, more than double the number that occurred during all of 2019 when eleven murders were reported.
While throughout 2021 there were 17 intentional homicides and in 2020 there were 13, according to official figures from the Ministry of Government.
“They came on six motorcycles to intimidate me because they don’t want me to continue with the process, I don’t know why they finally don’t issue the capture ticket to force the defendant to respond to the summons; I witnessed how he killed my daughters and on Monday I saw how he came to give me a gunshot. They hit us with rifles and the girl under the age of 14 died from a stray bullet,” says Mercedes, who was asked by the Prosecutor’s Office to be linked in 2019 to a case of illicit drug trafficking, but the Multi-Competent Criminal Judicial Unit of the Quinindé canton rejected the request.
“The Tiguerones gang and my nephew are behind the death of my two daughters and now they want to kill me,” says the mother of murdered women
“They did not come on Monday when I called them about the shooting, but they did arrive yesterday (Wednesday, October 19) in an operation as if I were the most wanted, like 50 police officers. I told them show me the search warrant, they never showed it to me, They took my son into custody, but half an hour later they released him. I asked them for the ticket and they didn’t show me either, they broke doors. They do come here and if they hunt you down like an ant, but they are not going to stop those who have the weapons, nor do they force pecueca Give your version to the Prosecutor’s Office for the death of my daughters,” Mercedes said about the police operation.
The shooting on Monday happened a day before the appointment in which alias pecueca He was going to give his version on the accusation of murdering two of Chumo’s daughters. The order has not yet been finalized.
Nathaly Gracia, 21, and Jennifer Gracia, 26, were killed On the afternoon of January 19, when Mercedes was walking home with her two daughters and the baby of one of them in the Nuevos Horizontes neighborhood, in the sector known as Nuevo Quinindé, inhabited mainly by the migrant population that comes to this canton in search of employment.
Suddenly, two men on a motorbike crossed their path head on. the one who was behind pulled out a gun and shot Jennifer. She died immediately after receiving two shots that pierced her head.
Then, whoever was driving the motorcycle yelled that she was not the one to kill, that it was the other one. Then the man chased Nathaly, who was running with the eight-month-old baby in her arms. Both fell from the shots. Nathaly died three days later from her injuries and the baby was grazed by a bullet.
Mercedes lunged at the assassin and grabbed him by the shirt. She recounts that she fell on him while she yelled at him: “Damn coward, why my daughters? Kill me. I knew him (the murderer), I came to the neighborhood where he lived”, but the man pushed her and wounded her with a shot that grazed her throat, and she fled the scene.
Family points to aliases pecueca Y horse like the two who were on the motorcycle that day.
The police reported at the time that these violent deaths correspond to the dispute over the territory for the sale of drugs (micro-trafficking).
Mercedes assures that things are not so. That the drug is behind the double crime and the attempts to assassinate herbut it is because she does not want to let them enter to sell her in the La Aldea neighborhood, where she returned to live.
The reason for the persecution is that the criminal organization Los Tiguerones wants to sell drugs in the La Aldea neighborhood, according to Mercedes. “My nephew Javier joined that gang and he wants this territory because the only neighborhood they haven’t taken over to sell drugs is this one. I have told them that they are going to kill me, but here I am not going to allow anyone to cause disorder. They say that there is more movement here because it is more central, what they don’t know is that they made me stronger after the death of my two little girls. Before, I was weak because I was afraid that they would do something to them, but it didn’t help me, they killed them anyway, ”he says.
He then admits that he has been in custody of armed men since they killed his two daughters. “The police do not give me security. They even come and take away the barricades that I put up to prevent those from that gang from entering the neighborhood. Then Some friends over there give me security who sent me some armed guys to take care of me. They guard the entrance to my house, that’s why they don’t come in to kill us and only shoot from outside. Night or day, they don’t have the time to come and put lead in,” says the woman. (YO)
Source: Eluniverso
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