A gay couple from Texas was found tortured, shot and dismembered outside a Mexican border city that had already reported a spate of women murdered in the young new year.
The bodies of Julissa Ramírez and Nohemí Medina Martínez were discovered Sunday in garbage bags on a highway outside Ciudad Juárez, just over the border from the couple’s El Paso home, according to El Diario, a Spanish-language newspaper.
The couple, who were believed to be in their late 20s and got married last summer, had last been seen by family the day before the grim discovery, the outlet reported.
Ramírez was living in El Paso, just north of the border, but Martínez still resided in Ciudad Juárez, their Facebook profiles said. The couple was originally from the state of Chihuahua and were visiting relatives there, according to El Diario.
They reportedly left behind three children — two girls and a boy.
Authorities were investigating the murders of 11 women and more than 50 men in Ciudad Juárez so far this year, El Diario said.
On Monday, another pair of women were found discarded in bags in Ciudad Juárez, according to El Paso’s KVIA. One victim was dead when the discovery was made, and the other was clinging to life but later died, the station reported, citing the Spanish newspaper.
The city is notorious for its drug violence, public killings and gruesome murders of women — labeled femicides by the government, according to the El Paso Times. Nearly 1,000 women were killed because of their gender last year in Mexico, the government said, according to the article.
Demonstrators carrying torches marched through downtown Juárez early Tuesday, demanding justice for women’s rights activist Isabel Cabanillas de la Torre, who was murdered in a central district two years ago, the Texas paper said. The unsolved case had emboldened the protesters to stand up to gender-based hate crimes, according to the outlet.
“La calle y la noche tambien son nuestras,” they reportedly chanted. “The street and the night also belong to us.”