14ymedio, Havena, 4 April 2023 — Rosa Amelia Sotolongo, 22, was murdered last Sunday by her partner in her home located in Aguada de Pasajeros, Cienfuegos province. Sotolongo marks the 20th victim of sexist violence so far in 2023, a figure that doubles the nine femicides that were registered by the same date last year.
Although her case has not yet been confirmed by the independent organizations that keep track of femicides — in the absence of official statistics — a friend of Sotolongo, on condition of anonymity, confirmed to the independent newspaper CubaNet that the murderer brutally attacked the victim with a machete, in the presence of her two children. Some details have also come out on social networks that support this version.
According to the facebook page headed Cubanos en Uruguay y Brasil, the assailant, who has not yet been identified, arrived at the house on Sunday morning and stabbed the victim several times in her chest and lung. The subject attacked the woman in front of her five-year-old daughter, who, upon witnessing the scene, took her two-year-old brother and went with him to the neighbor’s house to call the police.
Two police officers arrived at the scene, but they requested reinforcements from a provincial station located 64 kilometers from the victim’s home. “I cannot understand how two armed men were afraid of one who did not have a gun,” questions the CubaNet source .
The version circulating on the networks is that the subject threatened two people who tried to stop him and even injured a young man who defended himself: “Then she got stabbed inside the house.”
Network users assure that the agents arrested the murderer, but the source consulted by CubaNet could not confirm this version. Her friend insisted that the subject had a history of violence with Sotolongo and that he had previously attempted suicide “because of his mental illness.”
Two weeks earlier, the previous victim was Darisleni Fuentes Infante, murdered by her ex-partner on March 19 in the Popular de Pesquería Council, belonging to the municipality of Baraguá, in Ciego de Ávila. Ten days earlier, Elaidy Alonso Arbolaez, 27, was also killed by a man who “harassed her” in the community of Condado, in the municipality of Trinidad, in the province of Sancti Spíritus
Most of the femicides registered on the Island are carried out by partners and ex-partners of the victims. To date, February is the most violent month with 13 murders, in addition to three in January and three in March. The ’reddest’ provinces have been Guantánamo, Villa Clara, Matanzas, Camagüey, Havana, as well as Granma, Santiago de Cuba, Pinar del Río, Sancti Spíritus and Ciego de Ávila.
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