Yolanda Mamani Cayo / La Paz
The lives of three little brothers aged 11, eight and two years were consumed by flames in their home, a precarious wooden hut in the El Recreo II area, on the outskirts of the city of Trinidad, Beni. Police personnel and the Prosecutor’s Office, who arrived after the tragedy, opened the investigation for a triple infanticide.
“When we saw through the canchón, the house was burning, we ran to help, but when we arrived, nothing could be done anymore, the flames had already engulfed the house, we hoped that there would be no one because they did not hear or screaming, or anything. The fire seems to have caught them sleeping, “said Pura Hurtado, a neighbor of the neighborhood where the tragedy occurred.
According to his testimony, the neighbors heard a loud explosion and noticed the fire at approximately 7:00 a.m. and immediately called the Police and Fire Department. People wanted to put out the fire, but couldn’t, because they don’t have water in the neighborhood.
A video shows the house, with a single room, covered in flames that surpassed the corrugated roof, in the middle of the bushes and trees of the place, inside the three children lay.
Closed with padlock
The neighbors hoped that there would be no one inside the house because the door was secured with a padlock, however, when the grandmother arrived she revealed that the three children were there. The hypothesis that the Police uses is that a candle caused the fire.
According to neighbor Hurtado, the mother arrived from work an hour and a half after the grandmother because apparently she lived alone with her three children, whom she supported. The location of the father is unknown.
When they arrived, the Police, the firefighters and the Public Prosecutor’s Office found the house consumed by the fire and only proceeded to carry out the legal removal of the three corpses.
The director of the Special Force to Fight Violence (Felcv) in Beni, Juan Carlos Robles, confirmed that the children’s mother, Yoselin MC, 27, “was not at the scene at the time of the events; later it arrived ”.
Meanwhile, the Beni Prosecutor’s Office began the investigation of the case and apprehended the children’s mother, whom it identified as the main suspect in an alleged triple infanticide.
“The medical-legal autopsy of the children determined anoxic anoxia, acarminated pulmonary edema, chemical asphyxia from carbon monoxide poisoning, carbonization as the cause of death,” reported the Beni departmental prosecutor, Ruthiar Vásquez.
While yesterday the Police made a collection for the burial, the bodies of the little brothers were watched by relatives and neighbors last night in Trinidad in three white mortuary boxes.
