14ymedio, Justo Mora/Mario J. Pentón, Cienfuegos | 23 August 2018 — Justice came to Cienfuegos but in the deepest silence from the Provincial Court, which has kept secret the sentence of life imprisonment for two of the three men accused of raping and murdering Leidy Pacheco Mur, 18 years old and mother of a 10-month-old baby.
The information came to the public light this Thursday because the victim’s family told the local weekly 5 de Septiembre that Enrique Campos, 32, and Darián Gómez Chaviano, 25, had been sentenced to life imprisonment. The third man involved in the crime, Henry Hanoi Tamayo Hernández, 19, was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The trial lasted two days, August 7-8, during which the population gathered in front of the court, which was protected by the police. The crowd rebuked the men with cries of “To the firing-wall” and “murderers.”
The sentence of the court can be appealed to the People’s Supreme Court.
“The truth is that those men got off easy. They should be shot after causing so much pain,” Margarita Fuentes, resident of the Junco Sur suburb on the outskirts of the city, told 14ymedio.
Yesenia Oliva, who planted herself outside the court during the trial, says that it’s an “exemplary sentence.”
“People don’t realize that there is a moratorium on the death penalty. The most that they can do is give them life imprisonment. The prisoners in Ariza will take care of those bastards,” she added.
Leidy Pacheco Mur was murdered September 26 of last year. At 2:56 PM, when she was a block from her home, she called her husband so that he wouldn’t worry about her, but she never arrived.
Enrique Campos, Henry Hanoi Tamayo, and Darián Gómez covered her mouth, took her to Plan Mango, a grove on the outskirts of Cienfuegos, raped her, killed her, and buried her at the bank of a small dam, according to the testimony of her father, Pedro Valentín Pacheco Alonso.
The three murderers lived in the same neighborhood as the victim. The next day the family notified the authorities of the young woman’s disappearance.
Family members, neighbors, and even one of the rapists participated in the search for the young woman, which lasted six days.
The death of Leidy Pacheco moved Cienfuegos, a city that in barely a year has suffered various murders. On February 14 Luis Santacruz Labrada was murdered with a knife and in May a double murder of women shocked the city, which in the past counted safety as one of its biggest appeals.
Translated by: Sheilagh Carey
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