A 31-year-old pregnant woman and two men aged 21 and 30 were shot dead in Guatemala City, after the massive concert by the Colombian Karol G, attended by thousands of people in Cayalá, one of the most luxurious areas of the capital. of the Central American country. A 33-year-old man, identified as Christian Aroldo Heinemann, was arrested hours later as the main accused of the triple crime and the Police confiscated a 9 millimeter caliber pistol from him, even though he did not have a legal carrying license.
The events occurred in the early hours of Sunday on Austríaco Boulevard in zone 16 of Guatemala City, a few meters from the US Embassy and the venue where Karol G offered her second consecutive concert in that place after also performing on Friday.
The two male victims of the crime, identified as Gerson David Barreray Ángel Estuardo Trujillo, left the performance when it ended and went to their vehicle, although they found it with broken windows. Therefore, they started an argument with the person they had supposedly paid to take care of their car while they attended the event. It is common in these types of events for many people to take care of the vehicles in exchange for money to prevent them from being stolen.
After several minutes of a heated argument, the man they had rebuked took out a firearm with which he shot them at point-blank range, causing their death, although a stray bullet also hit a young woman, identified as Diana Yasmin Chinchilla, 31 years old. , who was pregnant and was heading home with her two children, ages 2 and 11. The victim, who lived in the Las Vacas neighborhood, very close to the place, had remained outside the concert listening to it on the public road. After seeing how her mother died in front of them, the two children had to receive care from the Volunteer Firefighters because they suffered a nervous breakdown.
Agents of the National Civil Police from Police Station 13 captured the man accused of firing his weapon at 7:25 a.m. this Sunday and took him to the Court Tower in Guatemala City to bring him to justice. The Police itself published a video on its social networks in which the alleged perpetrator of the triple crime is seen accompanied by two agents and with his hands handcuffed behind him and wrapped in yellow bags, so that the Crimes Against Life Prosecutor’s Office , in charge of the investigation, performed the test for gunpowder remains.
ENDEMIC VIOLENCE IN GUATEMALA
Guatemala suffers from endemic violence, so that in January of this year alone, 330 deaths associated with criminal acts were investigated, of which 231 were caused by a firearm projectile, according to the National Institute of Forensic Sciences (INACIF), which reveals that in all of 2023, 4,353 violent deaths were recorded in this country of 16 million inhabitants.
The Minister of the Interior, Francisco Jiménez, assured on his social networks that “a night of joy was marred by a direct attack” and stressed that, despite the capture of the alleged perpetrator was “immediate” by the Police, “that is not “It takes away the pain from families.” In this sense, in the purest style of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, he said that “to these criminals who think they can get away with it, I tell them that the party is over.”
Jiménez has been in office for just over a month after being appointed by the president of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, who took office on January 14. The minister recalls in his in peace”. For this reason, he announces that “we will do that” and, along these lines, during the short period he has been in office, he has made several seizures in the country’s prisons to prevent the prisoners, the majority belonging to gangs, from continuing to give orders. of extorting and murdering in the streets.
This new security policy did not prevent, however, the triple crime from tarnishing the success of the singer Carolina Giraldo Navarro, known as Karol G or ‘La Bichota’, who gave two concerts in Guatemala City on March 1 and 2 with a full house as part of their tour ‘Tomorrow will be beautiful Latam Tour 2024’. For more than two hours, she performed some of her best-known hits such as Tusa or My ex was right.
One day before her arrival in Guatemala, the singer suffered an accident on her private jet in which she was traveling with her team and family when it failed a few minutes after taking off from Los Angeles, in the United States, so the pilot requested a emergency landing in that city after noticing smoke in the cabin. This meant that her plane had to stay in that country for the pertinent investigation, so Karol G. traveled the next day and his flight arrived a few hours before the concert.
“Guatemala we are already taking off! I see you today in the name of God! “I’m coming straight to the show… a little patience, but I’m not going to let you down, especially the people who have been lining up for days,” he highlighted on his X account, referring to hundreds of fans who spent the night on the outskirts of the show. concert venue to be able to get a good spot. During its first performance, ‘La Bichota’ also had problems due to a lack of power: “the power generators on the entire stage died. I don’t know what’s going on energetically, but whatever’s going on I’m not going to leave. You came to put on a show and we are going to do it,” she said between tears, while thousands of people cheered her.
