BOGOTA.- The father of a 15-year-old girl who died violently and whose case has shocked Colombia, asked the court on Tuesday to impose the maximum sentence on the alleged murderer.
“My call is to the people who dictate the sentences, let them be the maximum, because such a person does not deserve to be free harming the girls of this country,” Genaro González, father of Michel Dayana, told the press.
If the suspect is convicted of femicide, the penalty could reach 50 years in prison.
The minor left her house to buy food on the night of December 7 and after hours of searching she was reported missing. The next day she was found dismembered in an automotive workshop in her neighborhood in the city of Cali, in the southwest of the country.
After the murder, the authorities named Harold Andrey Echeverry Orozco, the guard of the workshop where the minor was found dead, as the main suspect, and offered nearly $25,000 for information that would help locate him.
Echeverry Orozco was captured on Monday in Villavicencio, in the department of Meta and more than 500 kilometers from Cali.
Brigadier General José Gualdrón Moreno, commander of the Cali police, detailed on Tuesday in a press conference that they received hundreds of calls from citizens about the alleged murderer and one of them warned that he was in Villavicencio.
According to the agent, they had information about Echeverry Orozco’s possible intention to flee to Ecuador, so they blocked the border and increased security in the area. For prevention, they also reinforced controls on the border with Venezuela.
The suspect would have traveled from Cali to a rural area of the department of Tolima, where he arrived on a motorcycle that hours before he had tried to sell, and then to Villavicencio.
With candles and flowers, the minor was laid to rest on Monday at a sports center in her neighborhood in Cali, where dozens of people attended to say goodbye to her.
“When they gave me the news (of the capture) I was on my way to the cemetery to bury my daughter. The truth was something calming for me and my family… this fact does not bring my daughter back, but she is happy that they captured the person who committed such a heinous crime,” the minor’s father told the press in a video call from Cali.
A judge must decide on the legality of the capture of Echeverry Orozco and then whether or not a security measure in a prison center is imposed on him.
