Attorney General Jean Alain Rodríguez has created a high-level commission to investigate the case of 16-year old pregnant Emely Peguero who has been missing in the community of Cenoví near San Francisco de Macorís since last week. The main suspect is Marlon Martínez, the boyfriend of the teenager.
San Francisco Appeals Court prosecutor Felipe Restituyo, as reported in Acento, said that Marlon Martínez confessed to the murder and said he had thrown the body of Peguero in the San Francisco garbage dump.
Marilin Martínez, the mother of Marlon Martinez, on Wednesday, 30 August 2017, sat for interrogations by Salcedo prosecutor Viterbo Cabral. She is the deputy director of the Salcedo passports office, and a leading PRD party activist. The PRD is an ally of the ruling PLD party. She was left under arrest.
Nevertheless, she had told reporters from the Diario Libre: “I am not an accomplice. I am acting as a mother. I have placed my son in the hands of the Justice Department that is investigating what it must investigate. “ Later it was reported that an arrest order had been issued for her capture for alleged complicity in the murder.
There had been optimism the young girl would be found, but with the new reports, the search is now focused on finding her body. She was last known to have gone out on Wednesday, 23 August 2017, with her boyfriend Marlon Martínez to a medical appointment as her relatives have told the authorities and the press. Her family said they did not see her again.
As reported, the apartment where Marilin Martínez lives with her son was searched by the authorities on Tuesday, 22 August. Although there are rumors that there were blood stains on a mattress and a towel, members of the Justice Department have not disclosed what they found during the search. The Police did confirm that the apartment building surveillance video taken by security cameras has disappeared.
The watchman on duty at the building told the press he had been watching the security cameras when it captured the moment in which the young man left his apartment carrying a large bag. Kevin Jimenez who has worked at the condominium for eight years said that he witnessed this happening on the morning of Wednesday, 30 August 2017. Jimenez denied that he had taken the video.
Public protests in the community of San José where the young girl’s parents live have brought to a standstill large areas of the provinces of Duarte and Hermanas Mirabal.
General Nelson Rosario, spokesman for the Police, said they are working on two possible theories for the disappearance of 16-year old Emily Peguero who was five months pregnant. One is that she refused to have an abortion and the other is that she died from a forced abortion.
On Wednesday, 30 August 2017, the media reported that dozens of relatives of Peguero, friends and community leaders attempted to take justice into their own hands against Marlon Martínez, when he accompanied police to the San Francisco de Macorís dump in search of the body of Emely Peguero. Police had to intervene. Martínez did not get out of the vehicle in which he was transported to the dump.
Genaro Peguero, father of the minor, said he no longer has hopes to finding his daughter alive. But, as reported in El Dia, he said that he trusts the investigations will lead to the culprits.
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Acento
El Dia
Diario Libre
Diario Libre
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Listin Diario
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El Dia
31 August 2017
