Daniela Espitia Flórez told her grandmother that she would go out for a moment, that she would soon return, that she was going to run an errand. However, when she said goodbye, neither she nor her grandmother knew that would be the last time they would see each other, as the 21-year-old was on her way to a date with death.
With her tight jeans, a simple blouse, tennis shoes and a backpack, Dani left her home, in the Villa Del Carmen neighborhood of Soledad, at noon. He walked away, left his five and two year old children where the neighbor who used to take care of them and continued. It was Monday, July 17, 2020 and a couple of hours later they found her dead in a motel room in downtown Barranquilla.
From the beginning, the authorities and Daniela’s relatives linked her ex-partner, Deimer Eduardo Díaz Mendoza, to the heinous crime. While no one knew that she would meet the father of her children that afternoon, the security cameras of the residence registered them entering together the type of commercial establishment whose popular and humorous name becomes more precise than ever: ‘the slaughterhouse’.
THE HERALD had access to the images recorded by the exterior and interior cameras of the motel. In one of them the couple is seen arriving in a taxi that parked right at the entrance, as is usually the protocol for motels. Deimer got out first and walked around the wall of bushes that covers the front of the place to reach the door. Dani took a little longer. Even when the taxi left, she stopped for a few seconds before entering.
Inside they were received by a woman, the waitress, who would be the same one who an hour and a half later found Daniela’s body. At that moment It was exactly 1:24 in the afternoon and the door had closed behind the couple who had started the relationship seven years ago, when she was just 13.
Daniela and Deimer they were at the reception for a couple of minutes, while the manager gave them the key to the room that, as EL HERALDO learned later, was supposedly chosen at random. It was the last bedroom in the motel, the furthest away. There, they come out of the camera’s focus.
A relative of Daniela said that On the day of the crime, he himself saw the videos. What is seen when he leaves the room to get a soda and enters again. Then, as recorded, Deimer went out alone, fitting the white jumpsuit into his pants and carrying the young woman’s bag on his back. He never came back, and Daniela? Not out.
The authorities indicated that the young mother was found naked on the bed in the room. She had wounds on her chest that would have been made with a bottle spout and to one side the pillow was left with the marks of makeup that resulted from suffocating her to death.
Two days after the crime, the 12th Municipal Criminal Judge with guarantees control functions, at the request of a sectional prosecutor of the Early Warning Unit for Homicides of Barranquilla, issued an arrest warrant against Deimer Díaz.
For the moment, the whereabouts of the alleged murderer is unknown, who allegedly informed his family about the crime and asked for their help to escape. On the other hand, those close to Daniela also reported that all the relatives with whom Deimer Díaz lived in the Villa del Carmen neighborhood, in Soledad – the same one where the victim lived – moved after learning of the homicide.
For their part, the relatives of Daniela Espitia plan to hold a peaceful protest this Saturday in the Soledad neighborhood where both the victim and the alleged murderer had lived their entire lives. The intention is only one: justice.
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