Killing of 7-year-old girl stokes anger in Mexico

The killing of a 7-year-old girl on the southern outskirts of Mexico City has stoked rising anger over brutal slayings of women, including one found stabbed to death and skinned earlier this month

MEXICO CITY —
The killing of a 7-year-old girl on the southern outskirts of Mexico City has stoked rising anger over brutal slayings of women, including one found stabbed to death and skinned earlier this month.

The city prosecutor’s office said Monday that investigators identified a body found over the weekend as that of Fatima, a grade-school student who was taken by a stranger on Feb. 11. By law, prosecutors don’t give the full name of victims.

Her body was found wrapped in a bag and abandoned in a rural area on Saturday and was identified by genetic testing. The cause of death has not been released. Five people have been questioned in the case, and video footage of her abduction exists.

Prosecutors’ spokesman Ulises Lara offered a $100,000 reward for information on the person who picked her up when she left school.

The abduction and killing of the child-year-old came just two days after Ingrid Escamilla, a young Mexico City resident, was allegedly murdered by a boyfriend.

The man, who has been arrested and purportedly confessed to killing Escamilla with a knife, mutilated her body and flushed part of her corpse into the sewer.

Indignation grew after some local media published horrific photos of the skinned corpse, apparently leaked by city police officers.

Protesters read a statement Friday saying, “It enrages us how Ingrid was killed, and how the media put her body on display.”

The killings have proved a politically difficult issue for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who said protests over the killings were an attempt to distract attention from his social programs.

Last week, López Obrador showed little patience for those who questioned him about the government’s commitment to fighting violence against women.

“This issue has been manipulated a lot in the media,” the president said Monday, adding that “I don’t want the issue just to be women’s killings.”

On Monday, López Obrador defended his record, saying “we are working so that there won’t be any more women’s killings.”

But referring to protests last week over Escamilla’s killing in which demonstrators spray-painted the doors and walls of the colonial-era National Palace, the president said, “They shouldn’t paint our doors and walls.”