BROCKTON — The bodies of a young Ecuadorean and her toddler son were found stuffed in a Dumpster behind their downtown apartment house, and authorities said yesterday the mother and child may have been there for days.
“It’s a terrible crime scene, especially when you think about what happened to a small child and his mom. I mean, who would do that to a 2-year-old child?” said Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz.
Until autopsies determine the cause and manner of their deaths, Cruz refused to speculate on what evil may have befallen Maria Avelina Palaguachi-Cela, 25, and Brian Palaguachi, 2, except to say the mother was last seen at her home at 427 Warren Ave. on Thursday.
“We do not believe this is a random act,” Cruz said.
No arrests have been made.
A New York cousin of the child’s father — day laborer Manuel Caguana — told the Herald last night Caguana was questioned by police, but had been working “far, far away” for about two weeks when his son and Palaguachi-Cela were found by cops Sunday night.
The baby’s father had called his family repeatedly last week “and there was no answer, no answer. So he was worried,” said the cousin, who is also named Manuel Caguana. “He was like, my wife, my son, where are they?”
When the father returned home, “everything was quiet, clean, just as he had left it, so he was shocked when the police came and told him she was dead,” Caguana said.
The family “were good people,” the cousin added. “They were always going to church.”
Denise Agnello, who lives across the street from Palaguachi-Cela’s spearmint-colored triple-decker, said the young woman lived with a man, whom she saw police talking to after the gruesome find.
Agnello said detectives questioned her, too. When she asked what was going on, “All they said to me was, ‘We found a young woman in the Dumpster in a duffel bag, dead,’ ” she said.
Cruz refused to comment on whether a duffel bag was involved or how the remains were positioned —in part, he explained, because police don’t know if the presumed crime scene was disturbed. “My understanding,” he said, “is the bodies involved in this were fully intact.”
Agnello said she usually saw Palaguachi-Cela — a quiet, petite woman — on a daily basis, but not in the past week.
“Right across the street — it’s just awful,” she said.
According to Manuel’s cousin, Manuel Caguana and Palaguachi-Cela originally met as neighbors in Ecuador and reconnected in the United States. Manuel had been living in New York, but moved to Massachusetts “for love” of Palaguachi-Cela, his cousin said.
The couple had been married for about four years but, the cousin said, Palaguachi-Cela had a prior relationship with a man who he believes may also live in Massachusetts.
No comments:
Post a Comment