Murder of former Miss Venezuela spotlights country's rampant crime
The murder of former Miss Venezuela Monica Spear and a companion in a roadside robbery was only unusual for the famous name in a country that suffers one of the world's highest murder rates.
The murder of former Miss Venezuela Monica Spear and a companion in a roadside robbery was only unusual for the famous name in a country that suffers one of the world's highest murder rates.
A Venezuelan beauty queen was killed last night in a reminder of the uglier side of Venezuela.
Monica Spear, the 2004 Miss Venezuela and an international Spanish-language soap-opera star, was shot along with her companion Thomas Henry Berry on the road between Valencia and Puerto Cabello.
They were awaiting a tow truck after their car broke down, according to local news reports. Their five-year-old daughter was hurt in the suspected robbery, but is in stable condition.
Many took to social media to lament Spear鈥檚 slaying and share condolences. But take away the famous name and the deaths were all too familiar in a country where 鈥渆xpress鈥� kidnappings 鈥� in which victims are driven around town and forced to drain their bank accounts at gunpoint 鈥� are reported weekly and crime rates are notoriously high.
Venezuela has one of the highest murder rates in the world. According to a December report by the Venezuelan Observatory on Violence, an NGO, there were 24,763 murders in Venezuela in 2013, a 14 percent rise in homicides from 2012. UN data from 2010 shows that Venezuela had the fourth highest murder rate in the world behind Honduras, El Salvador, and Jamaica.
Last May, President Nicol谩s Maduro rolled out a security plan dubbed 鈥淧atria Segura,鈥� which included mobilizing the military alongside the national police to fight crime. Juan Cristobal Nagel writes in The Caracas Chronicles, an opposition blog, that the homicide rate this year of about 79 people per 100,000 displayed the failure of the government鈥檚 program:
David Smilde and Rebecca Hanson from the Washington Office on Latin America in October looked into the question of what Venezuelans think can be done to reduce crime there. The economy is sputtering, inflation is sky high at 54 percent, and shortages of everything from toilet paper to sugar are rampant. However, the top response (respondents selected three measures from a list of seven, noted in full below*) in a survey implemented by polling firm Datanalisis was 鈥渋mproving family values.鈥�
More than 70 people have been killed in Venezuela since the New Year, reports NBC.
* Survey choices included: improving the values taught to children by the family; decreasing poverty and social inequality; professionalizing police officers; reforming the judicial and penal systems; a permanent deployment of military in sectors with high rates of crime; improving access to sports and cultural activities; and improving access to public space.
Editor's note: A previous version of this story misstated Mr. Berry's first name.