On April 12, a new case of violence against women was registered in Nicaragua. Jenelieth Noryeli Peña López, 19 years old, was found lifeless in a riverbed in the Villanueva neighborhood, District III of Managua. The young woman’s body showed multiple signs of violence.
The victim’s corpse was found by some children who were in the area looking for porridge to fish; while a search and rescue team was in charge of extracting the remains of Peña, since the channel is several meters deep.
Jenelieth Pena was reported missing since Monday, April 10, when he went for a job interview and didn’t come back.
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Heymi González, a friend of the victim, explained to the official media that “she (Jenelieth) left the house on Monday and from there we know nothing. She told me that she was going to see a friend in the Camilo Ortega neighborhood, but she did not come and then she told me that she had been offered a job and that she would go to the interview, that it was night, but that she would attend. And that is the message that we see strangely because at that time there are no interviews.
González also indicated that she tried to communicate with her friend, but apparently her cell phone was turned off and that on the day of the disappearance Peña was dressed in black pants, a white shirt and black shoes, the same clothes she was found in on Wednesday.
At the place of discovery, agents of the National Police and specialists from the Institute of Criminalistics and Forensic Sciences appeared to start the investigations. The victim’s body was transferred to the Institute of Legal Medicine to determine the causes of her death.
In addition, the authorities, at the crime scene, found a bag belonging to Jenelieth Peña in which her identity card, passport and some belongings were, with which they could rule out that he was a victim of robbery.
The young woman was originally from Camoapa, Boaco municipality, but was living in Managua at a friend’s house in the Camilo Ortega neighborhood, from where she supposedly left on Monday to see another friend.
According to the official Radio Ya, Mrs. María Leonor González, Peña’s mother, reported the disappearance of his daughter on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 11, at the Camoapa police station and then traveled to Managua to look for her, hoping to find her alive.
As of April 2023, the organization Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir registered at least 26 women who have been victims of sexist violence in Nicaragua.
The body explained that 16 of the 26 femicides were committed in the national territory and 10 were perpetrated abroad: five in Costa Rica, three in the United States, one in Mexico and another in Guatemala, countries where entire families have emigrated due to the repression of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
