By EFE
Dec 21, 2024, 1:27 PM EST
The Panama Police arrested this Friday the hitman who sneaked into a hospital in the capital last week disguised as medical personnel to murder a patient of Colombian nationality who was admitted after suffering an attack.
“After operational actions in the town of Veracruz, we apprehended a person allegedly linked to the crime of Homicide, to the detriment of a Colombian citizen, an event that occurred on December 13, 2024, at the Santo Tomás Hospital,” the Panamanian Police reported in X .
For its part, the Panamanian Prosecutor’s Office also indicated that That murderer is known as “alias ‘Denver’.” and will be brought before a guarantee hearing.
“Homicide and Femicide Section of the Metropolitan Prosecutor’s Office will take alias ‘Denver’, arrested in Veracruz, to a guarantee hearing for his alleged participation in the homicide of a patient held at the Santo Tomás Hospital, which occurred on December 13, 2024,” he detailed. the Prosecutor’s Office in X.
On December 13, a hitman disguised as medical personnel entered the Santo Tomás Hospital and shot dead a patient of Colombian nationalitywho had been admitted the previous week after receiving “shot wounds in another incident, recorded last weekend on 76th Street San Francisco, when he was traveling in a van” and in that “same event another person died,” as reported by the Prosecutor’s Office.
Until October 2024, 501 homicides have been recordedaccording to official statistics.
Authorities maintain that 70% of the murders in the country are linked to organized crime, including gangs, which are responsible for hiding drugs arriving from South America and mobilizing them to leave for North America and Europe, as well as retail. in the local market.
On October 10, the president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino -who assumed his five-year mandate on July 1, 2024-, launched a plan to “free” the country from gangs that put more than a thousand police officers to patrol the streets checking “house by house or farm by farm” of the gangs. main dangerous areas.
In Panama there are around 150 gangsalthough their way of acting and aesthetics is very different from the Central American gangs, which are much larger, violent and identifiable by their tattoos.
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