The Death of a Young Woman in Police Custody Outrages Hondurans
Keyla Martínez, a 26-year-old student, died of asphyxiation when she was being held alone in a police cell. But many don't buy the police line that she committed suicide.
JE
By Jeff Ernst
February 16, 2021, 10:39am
Tattooed on Keyla Martínez’s forearm was a stethoscope whose coiled tube blossomed into a lotus flower. It was a symbol of the 26-year-old nursing student’s love for her vocation. In a few months she would graduate, becoming the first in her family to achieve such a feat.
She had a tattoo of a butterfly on her thigh, too. She loved butterflies, wearing them as pins in her hair, around her neck, dangling from her ears, and posing for pictures with her arms stretched wide like wings in front of murals. “It was like her logo,” said her mother, Norma Rodriguez. “She was my butterfly.”
But on the night of February 6, Martínez’s promising young life came to a sudden and tragic end. After having dinner with friends in her hometown in western Honduras, she was on her way home when the police stopped the car she was riding in for a pandemic curfew violation. She and the driver were detained and jailed for the night. Hours later, she was dead.
The next morning the police released a statement saying that Martínez had committed suicide. The results of an autopsy, however, ruled her death a homicide by asphyxiation, confirming what many had already suspected.
More:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7vmmq/the-death-of-a-young-woman-in-police-custody-outrages-hondurans
Keyla Martínez
Rest in Peace
