Miss Honduras was fatally shot as she tried to escape her sister's
jealous boyfriend, police and reports said, hours after the siblings were found
dead beside a river.
Maria Jose Alvarado,
19, who had been due to fly to London to compete in the Miss World beauty
pageant, disappeared with her sister Sofia Trinidad Alvarado six days ago after
a party, sparking an exhaustive search.
La Prensa newspaper
reported that police were investigating whether Trinidad's boyfriend, Plutarco
Ruiz, shot Sofia Trinidad in the head after he became jealous when he saw her
dancing with another man. He then reportedly shot her beauty-queen sister twice
in the back as she tried to flee.
Chief detective
Leandro Osorio said the bodies of Maria Jose and her 23-year-old sister had
been found buried along the banks of the Aguagual River in the town of Arada,
in violence-plagued Honduras's northwest.
"We are 100
percent sure that it's them," Osorio said.
Police arrested Ruiz
and his alleged accomplice on Tuesday, seizing a Colt-45 pistol and two
vehicles.
- Boyfriend is main
suspect -
Security Minister
Arturo Corrales said there was "no doubt" that Ruiz was behind the
crime and that he had been helped by another man, Aris Maldonado Mejia.
"We think that
Plutarco led the crime, materially and intellectually," Corrales said.
Police are investigating
additional suspects who they believe tried to help cover up the shooting,
including by cleaning and repainting a pick-up used in the crime.
On Wednesday, police
also arrested the resort's owner Ventura Diaz; his wife Elizabeth Alvarado; and
their daughter Irma Nicolle.
Organizers of the
Miss World pageant, which begins Saturday, sent their condolences and announced
a tribute this weekend in honor of the slain sisters.
"We are
devastated by this terrible loss of two young women, who were so full of
life," Julia Morley, the pageant's chairwoman, said in a statement.
"We will be
holding a special service with all of the Miss World contestants on Sunday,
where we will be honoring the lives of Maria Jose Alvarado and Sofia Trinidad,
and say prayers for them and their family."
Miss World organizers
said they also planned to donate money to a children's home in Honduras in the
two women's memory.
Alvarado, who turned
heads with her gleaming smile and wavy chestnut hair, was in her last year of
university at the Northern Polytechnic Institute, where she studied computer
science.
She had participated
in beauty contests since she was a young girl.
She was also known in
Honduras for her work as a model on popular TV game show "X-0."
She and her sister
disappeared outside the northwestern city of Santa Barbara after attending a
birthday party for the accused Ruiz at a local resort.
The riverbank where
their bodies were discovered was located about 20 kilometers (12 miles) away.
- World homicide
crown -
The sisters were last
seen leaving the party in a champagne-colored car.
Their mother, Teresa
Munoz, says the same vehicle was at her home earlier that day to pick up Maria
Jose, who had just arrived from the capital Tegucigalpa, about 200 kilometers
away.
Munoz had made a
tearful plea for the safe return of her daughters after their disappearance.
Residents of Santa
Barbara held a demonstration demanding their release Tuesday, when hope still
lingered that they were alive. Wearing white T-shirts with the girls' pictures
on them, they marched with a banner reading "May God protect them."
Honduras, a poor
Central American country of eight million people, has the world's highest
homicide rate, at 90.4 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012.
The United Nations'
special rapporteur on violence against women, Rashida Manjoo, warned in July
that violence against women was on the rise in Honduras, with a 263.4-percent
increase in the number of females killed violently between 2005 and 2013.
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