Woman charged in death of former partner in Morovis
Carmen Rodríguez Colón faces aggravated homicide charges following the death of Pedro Cruz Santiago, which occurred on 3 March in the municipality of Morovis.
Woman charged in death of former partner in Morovis
On Monday, prosecutors filed criminal charges against Carmen Rodríguez Colón, who is accused of the death of Pedro Cruz Santiago, her former partner, on 3 March in Morovis.
The charges include first-degree homicide and violation of firearms regulations. The judge ordered a bail of 150,000 dollars, which the defendant was unable to post, as a result of which she was remanded in custody.
From the outset, Rodríguez Colón claimed that she acted in self-defence. According to her account, Cruz Santiago repeatedly threatened to kill her. After being arrested in March, she produced photographs of bruises which she attributed to recent assaults by the deceased and described episodes of violence.
The defendant expressed fear that the man would carry out a threat to kill her, claiming that he had warned her he would repeat what his brother had done—his brother was the perpetrator of a feminicide at a barracks in Morovis during the previous year. In response to this alleged threat, Rodríguez used a legally owned revolver to shoot him. Cruz Santiago died during transport to a clinic.
The television network Telemundo Puerto Rico broadcast messaging conversations between the two, in which the deceased acknowledged harmful behaviour and expressed distress: he apologised for his conduct, mentioned that his head "was in a really bad place", that he could only conceive of "the worst" and pleaded with her to speak to him.
Both maintained a union of three decades. Both the suspected aggressor and the deceased had criminal records.
Source: Google News PR — Crime