“The target was the son of former Honduran president Porfirio Lobo (2010-2014), Said Lobo,” the head of the National Police, Gustavo Sánchez, assured this Saturday, after announcing the capture of six Mara Salvatrucha gang members for being the allegedly responsible for the massacre in which four young people died, including Lobo, 23, when they left a nightclub in Tegucigalpa at dawn this Thursday. However, not all the people involved in the quadruple crime have yet been arrested, given that, according to Sánchez, at least 11 people participated in the murder of Said Lobo, Luis Armando Zelaya (nephew-in-law of the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Honduran Armed Forces, Romeo Vásquez Velázquez) José Salomón Vásquez Chávez and Norlan Enrique Rivera Rodríguez (Saíd’s driver).
The police chief insisted that the “white” was the son of the e xmandatario, since “it is proven”, although he did not want to reveal the different hypotheses that they are handling. “For reasons of protecting the process, there are several hypotheses that do not want to be said publicly,” said Sánchez, who asked for “patience.” He also stressed that “as a result of the efforts and investigations, six members of the criminal structure were identified and captured, including one who commonly presented himself as a police officer.” Therefore, he stressed that the police institution has made “significant progress in clarifying” the crime that “unfortunately has filled several Honduran families with mourning.” However, there are still five more people to be apprehended also belonging to the Mara Salvatrucha.
Several Honduran media outlets, including El Heraldo, revealed today the existence of a police report, according to which the Mara Salvatrucha gang would have received a payment of 200,000 thousand dollars for the crime, of which 50,000 would have been received before perpetrating it. for the purchase of weapons and equipment and the rest when the murder was committed. According to the aforementioned report called ‘Magda II’, the Police have already identified all those involved and a strong group of lawyers is already pressing to defend them.
However, the statement from the Security Secretariat has been more concise and has not mentioned this alleged payment at any time. It has only been limited to reporting the arrest of six people from the “criminal structure” and the seizure of two firearms and 14 mobile phones, at the same time that several raids have been carried out that made it possible to find one of the vehicles used to commit the criminal action that presents bullet holes and from which “indication of vital importance that allow us to advance in a technical and scientific way” have been extracted. Thus, in the investigative work, four different intelligence and investigation teams from the Police are participating, directed by the Prosecutors of the Public Ministry to “work as a team and achieve results that allow us to clarify the facts.”
The crime occurred after two in the morning this Thursday when gunmen in police clothing and hoods massacred the four young men outside a nightclub in the country’s capital, Tegucigalpa. Six heavily armed men broke into a pick-up vehicle at the entrance to the Torre Morazán building where the nightclub is located. According to several surveillance cameras, the criminals got out and headed to the parking lot just at the exact moment in which the former president’s son and his companions left the place in two other vehicles and were paying for parking. The gunmen simulated a police search and forced the four youths to get out of the vehicle to search them and, later, place them with their backs facing a wall where they were massacred by shooting them in the head. Seconds before, the victims raised their shirts to show them that they were not armed, thinking that it was a police operation by anti-gang agents, since they were dressed in false clothing from the National Anti-Maras and Gang Force.
However, and before the eyes of several young people who were talking nearby, the gunmen activated their weapons and left the four victims lying lifeless and bloodied, who have already been buried in the last few hours. This Friday, the body of Said Lobo was buried in the cemetery of the village of El Chimbo, attended by the former Honduran president and former first lady of the country, Rosa Elena Bonilla, who obtained a 24-hour permit, because she is confined in jail after being arrested in 2018 for a corruption case known as ‘The lady’s petty cash’.
Before the funeral, Bonilla, investigated for the alleged appropriation of 500,000 dollars that corresponded to state funds destined for social works, stated that “I cannot describe to you the pain that we feel right now, because they have taken away part of my life, destroying our family. We don’t do anything to anyone,” she said through tears.
The former first lady of Honduras was found guilty in March of this year of the crimes of fraud and misappropriation of public funds after repeating the trial held in 2019 where she was sentenced to 58 years in prison for these events. Bonilla, who is waiting to receive a prison sentence that can exceed 16 years, obtained permission from the National Penitentiary Institute as she was not considered a “highly dangerous” criminal.
For his part, the former president of Honduras, Porfirio Lobo, remarked that “if they wanted to kill one, why didn’t they kill him, but instead kill four people?” Likewise, he showed his confidence in the authority “it will resolve, they will find those responsible and justice will punish them.”
After the murders, the six assassins began to run, given that from inside the parking lot someone began to shoot at them, mortally wounding one of them who was left lying on the ground after receiving a bullet in one of his legs and began to drag himself. At that moment, one of his companions grabbed him and put him in the vehicle where a seventh assassin was waiting to take him to a private hospital where he died. However, to avoid an investigation, the gunmen took the deceased from the health center to an unknown location.
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