( Spanish) — The crime of three women in Ecuador adds to the number of femicides which, so far in 2023, is around 138. The case of Nayeli Tapia, Denisse Reyna and Yuliana Macías has been activated by the Prosecutor’s Office with a special protocol to Investigate Femicides and other Violent Deaths of Women and Girls because the bodies were found with signs of violence.
The lifeless bodies of the three young women from the city of Santo Domingo, Ecuador, were found on Friday on the banks of the Esmeraldas River, in the Quinindé canton. According to the Esmeraldas police commander, General Fausto Buenaño, it was the fishermen in the area who alerted the police to the half-buried corpses in a sector that was difficult to access by land.
After the intervention of legal medicine personnel, it was possible to identify that it was Tapia, Reyna and Macías. “Apparently, the victims had injuries caused by a sharp weapon,” Commander Buenaño told the Ecuavisa network.
Days before fishermen found their remains, the families of the young women had reported them missing. According to local media, relatives said that the three had plans to travel to the beach to meet some friends at a vacation complex. They went out together on April 4th and that was the last time they were seen.
The commander of the Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas National Police, Joffre García, confirmed at a press conference that the crime is being investigated by personnel from the National Directorate of Crimes Against Life, Violent Deaths, Disappearances, Extortion and Kidnapping (DINASED) of the cantons of Santo Domingo and Quinindé. García explained that they located and retained the vehicle in which the three women were mobilized, “which was rented in our jurisdiction, but the act was consummated in Quinindé.”
According to the authorities, due to the state of decomposition of the bodies, it is estimated that the young women died on April 5.
According to Paulina Rueda, Yuliana Macías’s aunt, the forensics informed her that her niece’s cause of death was by slitting her throat.
In an interview with Teleamazonas Ecuador, Rueda asked the public not to link the violent death of the young women to drug trafficking, a version that circulated on social networks during the first hours after the discovery. He also demanded that justice be done and the case not go unpunished.
Nayeli Tapia was originally from Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, but lived in Quito. Denisse Reyna and Yuliana Macías were her best friends, her relatives reported during her funeral.
Reyna was also from Santo Domingo, but she did not live in the city either, but in Quevedo, in the province of Los Ríos, where she was studying Agriculture at the city’s State Technical University.
Finally, Macías was known as ‘Yuli’. Originally from Santo Domingo, she is remembered by her family as a good student and a loving girl. The young woman had graduated as a transportation technologist and when she passed away she was studying a second degree, according to her aunt.
During the funerals and before journalists, relatives of the victims denounced that they have received threats to stop investigating this case, something that the authorities are also investigating. However, they assure that they will continue in the search for justice.
