Cops: Were Venezuelan students drug mules?

POLICE are divided over the motive for the Tuesday night murders in which Venezuelan students Lorena Matiguan and her co-worker Johan Perez were killed at their workplace in St Clair. “While we are still toying with the possibility of a crime of passion,  we are also looking at the possibility that the two students were drug carriers for a international drug ring that has either Colombian or Venezuelan connections and were executed because they knew too much or failed to carry out certain orders. “One thing for sure is that to enter that place it had to be somebody they knew.” According to information, Sharon McCarthy, co-owner of the elite 33rd Avenue Clothing boutique, corner Havelock Street and St Clair Avenue in Woodbrook  left her part time attendant  Matiguan, 24,  and cleaner/handyman Perez, 21, in charge of the store while she went out.

She returned around 5.10 pm and after searching for her workers found their dead bodies bound on the floor of the bathroom. Matiguan was found strangled with a tie around her neck, while Perez’s throat was slit and he had stab wounds to his body. Nothing was reportedly stolen and although residents reported seeing the two speaking to an unidentified man in front the store earlier that evening, they told Newsday nothing was suspected until they started seeing the police arriving. “We believe that the killer or killers could have been foreigners who came to do a job or a jealous lover who found the couple together and decided to kill them.” Several efforts to speak to associates of the two and the co-owner of the store were futile, but a Venezuelan friend of the family in broken English told this newspaper that the two were law students in Venezuela who had come to Trinidad to study English and believed the best way to learn was by interacting with the public, hence their reason for taking the job.

The speaker could not say what part of Venezuela they were from or how long they have been in this country. Police sources also informed Newsday that relatives would be arriving in the country today after which autopsies will be performed. District Medical Officer Dr Clarke visited the building twice and had to wait several hours before pronouncing the couple dead because crime scene officers were trying to get some evidence at what they consider to be a bizarre crime. The two lived at Gallus Street, Woodbrook with several other Venezuelan students. A Venezuelan national is currently assisting police with their investigations. Cpl Boland of the St Clair Police Station is investigating.