The Honduran Fire Department found at least six bodies Saturday in a clandestine cemetery in Villanueva — east of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa — which, according to authorities, was used by criminal organizations to hide their victims.
The authorities had received a tip-off from neighbors on Friday, reported ‘El Heraldo’.
Rescue workers found two complete decomposed corpses and four dismembered bodies at the entrance to the cave. For the moment, the sex of five of the six bodies could not be determined due to the advanced state of putrefaction.
The only one identified is 17-year-old Isaac Saúl Lanza, who had disappeared on Sunday, November 6, according to his relatives. Police estimate that the rest of the bodies may have been at the site for 1 to 10 days.
The commissioner of the National Police, Miguel Martinez Madrid, said that they do not know how many days the bodies had been at the site, since some may have decomposed faster than others due to the conditions of the place, a cave with a stream of water.
Most of the bodies will be identified by odontogram tests, that is to say through the analysis of their dental pieces and scientific fingerprints at the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The same local media reports that this is not the first time that clandestine graves have been found in the Honduran capital, since earlier this year another one was found in the vicinity of Tiloarque which was used for the same purpose.
Last year 7,921 people were murdered, an increase of 21.4 percent over the previous year, according to data from the Violence Observatory of the National Autonomous University of Honduras.
