Angie Lucía Pérez says that only God has given her and her family the strength to cope with the death of her sister, Shirley Natalia Pérez Barrientos, 28, who appeared dead and tied hand and foot in a river in Platanar de San Carlos.
The woman assures that in the midst of the pain for the loss they have clung to the good memories they have of the young mother, whom many lovingly called her Naty.
“She was the oldest of three, in June she was going to be 29 years old. She got married last December after living common law for eleven years.
“My sister was very, very happy because of that, since she got married, she had a purer and different, greater joy. We are Catholics and that is why the sacrament of marriage means a lot, especially when it allows someone to get out of the sin of living with a person without being married,” said Angie.
The OIJ reported on Thursday that the autopsy revealed that the woman’s cause of death was suffocation by immersion, confirming that the murderer drowned her in the river in which she was found.
Authorities have yet to reveal whether Naty was sexually assaulted, but they did determine that she was killed between 9 pm and 11 pm Tuesday.
The body was found in the waters of the Platanar River, as it passes through the Blue Gorge, in Florencia de San Carlos, a kilometer and a half northeast of the local school.
The lifeless body of Nay was found by her husband after two hours of intense searching. He works on the same property where he lives with his family from 6 pm to 6 am., but on Tuesday morning his older daughter called him to tell him that his mother was nowhere to be seen.
Statistics from the OIJ detail that so far in 2020 in the province of Alajuela there have been 24 homicides, of which seven have occurred in the canton of San Carlos.