Chamber II of the Honduran National Sentencing Court unanimously declared the brothers Juan José Murcia and Leonel Núñez Murcia guilty of the disappearance of Enoc Misael Pérez, the child residing in Badalona who was kidnapped in the Central American country on December 2. of 2019 when he was 12 years old and whose whereabouts are unknown. In addition, both have been found guilty of three crimes of murder to the detriment of the child’s paternal grandfather, Rubilio Arturo Pérez, as well as his uncle Israel Humberto Ramos and the young neighbor who took care of him, Cindy Xiomara Castro, 21 years old.

Juan José Murcia and Leonel Núñez Murcia have been in pretrial detention since December 6, 2020 awaiting the trial that has been held for 10 days and in which they have been found guilty of the crimes of unjust deprivation of liberty, murder and continued aggravated robbery, as requested by the Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Life, which presented testimonial, expert and documentary evidence. In this way, the participation of the two brothers, who are responsible for the events, was verified, together with Bayron Humberto Meléndez, found dead in December 2020 in the La Tolva prison, and Abner Vega, who has been in prison since last 23 January awaiting trial. On April 25, the hearing will be held to determine the prison sentence against the two brothers and the Prosecutor’s Office has already announced that it will request close to 100 years in prison for each of them.

As soon as the court decision was made known, the child’s mother, Karina Chinchilla, published a video on her Facebook page, entitled ‘Let’s find my son Enoc Misael’, in which she regretted that the punishment will be “very little” for them because “they preferred to stay locked up to tell the truth” and reveal “what they did with my baby”. She, however, trusted that “we will get to the truth and that one day we will hear from my prince Enoch again.” On the other hand, she regretted that for her it has been “horrible to remove all this and tell detail by detail” what happened on the day of the crime, since she made her statement from Spain, although she was grateful that these people “will stay for a long time” in prison.

On March 21, when the last hearing was held, Chinchilla used the same social network to ask that “justice be done and that these people cannot leave and stay there”, although, in his opinion, “for them it is better to be in prison than outside because that’s where they eat, sleep and are even fatter”.

“We are waiting for answers,” stressed Enoc’s mother, who never lost hope of finding her son alive. During the trial, the witnesses recounted that on the day of the events they observed the four indicated when they took Enoc out of the house, together with his relatives found lifeless minutes later.

According to the investigation that has been ratified in the trial, Enoc, who had been living in Spain for nearly four years, traveled to Honduras on November 18, 2019 with his maternal grandparents to spend Christmas. In the Central American country, he went to the house of his paternal grandparents in Campo Elvir, a town in the city of Tela, in the department of Atlántida, in northern Honduras. The police report revealed that on November 2 of that year, three men broke into his home and, after shooting his paternal grandfather, the criminals suffocated him with a shoelace. They then waited for the child’s uncle, Israel Humberto Ramos, to arrive. Precisely, that day he had just received the money

that his sister and mother of the child had sent him from Spain to pay the salary of the neighbor who took care of him, Cindy Xiomara Castro.

As soon as they arrived at the house, the criminals also killed Enoc’s uncle with a blow to the head and kidnapped his caretaker and the minor. Both the body of the grandfather and the uncle appeared half-buried next to the house, while that of the nanny was found four days later also with signs of violence. However, to this day, Enoc, who was studying at the Rafael Alberti school in Badalona, ??has not yet appeared, nor is there any clue as to his whereabouts.

Three days after Enoc’s disappearance, Bayron Humberto Meléndez, alias ‘El Brujo’, 29, was arrested in a shopping center on December 5, 2019, one of the main suspects in the murder of the three people and the kidnapping of the child. On the day of the arrest, Meléndez, who was a neighbor of the family, was carrying a pistol in a backpack with which he could have committed the crimes, as well as a large number of light bulbs, half a kilo of marijuana and close to 11,000 lempiras. The Police always suspected that he was going to spend several days hiding in the mountains watching the child while waiting to receive a ransom for him.

In addition, in a search at his home, also located in the Campo Elvir neighborhood, they found bloody clothes from Enoc’s grandfather. Initially, he was only arrested for the crimes of possession of a firearm for commercial use and illicit drug trafficking, for which he was sentenced to several months in jail, after which he was charged with the murders of his grandfather, uncle and wife. child’s nanny, as well as the disappearance of the child.

However, he never confessed what he did with the minor and went to the grave with the secret, since on December 12, 2020 he was found dead of suffocation by hanging on a beam, apparently after committing suicide in his cell located in module three. from the maximum security prison known as La Tolva, in the Honduran department of El Paraíso.

With his death, the search for Enoc became even more complicated, despite the fact that the now convicted Juan José Núñez and Leonel Núñez Murcia, members of the criminal gang known as ‘Los Pesperos’, who were arrested on March 6, remained in preventive detention. December 2020. However, the two brothers never confessed the whereabouts of the child.

The last person to be arrested for these events was Abner Vega, whom the Honduran Police took three years to arrest and who is considered the main suspect in the kidnapping. He is currently behind bars after being arrested in the community of Atima, in the Honduran department of Santa Bárbara. Vega was on the list of most wanted criminals in Honduras, since the State Security forces directly involved him in the kidnapping and disappearance of Enoc.

The 42-year-old arrested today, for whom the minor’s family offered a reward of up to 250,000 lempiras (9,000 euros) had a warrant for his arrest since December 4, 2020 for the crimes of murder, illegal deprivation of aggravated liberty and aggravated robbery with violence. Specifically, according to the authorities, he is the ringleader of the criminal gang ‘Los Pesperos’, dedicated to kidnapping, armed robbery and contract killings in the coastal zone of Honduras. At the moment, Vega denies knowing Enoc or his mother: “I am innocent and I don’t know why they link me because I have nothing to do with the disappearance of the child,” he assured upon arrival at the courts in San Pedro Sula, where he did acknowledge knowing the two brothers convicted because “they were the children of a lady I had.”

The Police consider that his arrest will be key to finding Enoc’s whereabouts and it has become the only chance for the mother to find the child, who already had a residence permit in Spain. Chinchilla has come to say on multiple occasions that she does not lose hope of one day meeting her only son who dreamed of being an architect and playing soccer. Enoc turned 15 on November 13 and his mother continues to trust that he is still alive: “I do not lose faith because what keeps me alive is the desire to see him and hug him.”

According to the criteria of The Trust Project