Three women studying at a Mexican university — including a foreign exchange student — have been found dead over the past seven months.
Claudia Tacoronte, 21, and Kimberly Ramos and Karol Toledo, both 18, attended the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos, or UAEM, when they were killed in attacks dating back to February.
While the three murders involved different killers and motives, the issue of femicide in Morelos — a state just south of Mexico City — is causing grave concern. Sixty-nine females have been murdered between January and July.
Twenty-one of the killings were classified as femicides, a designation issued when a woman or girl is targeted because of her gender.
Tacoronte’s killing has has been deemed a femicide.
A Spanish exchange student from the University of Granada, Tacoronte had arrived at the public university in south-central Mexico, where about 40,000 students study, in August.
She was found dead on Sept. 12.
The early-childhood education major was at a festival centered on medicinal plants in Cuautla when Francisco Meléndez, 37, allegedly tried to steal her cell phone and in the process, stabbed the young woman to death.
Meléndez fled the scene, but was spotted on surveillance footage throughout the city in the days following Tacoronte’s killing.
The Morelos State Attorney General’s Office issued a wanted poster for Meléndez on Wednesday, and on Thursday, residents reported spotting the accused killer, who had by then shaved his head. He was arrested the same day.
Alberto Guerrero, a Mexican security policy strategist, told The Post that he wonders whether the government acted quicker to make an arrest in Tacoronte’s case to avoid international scrutiny. Following the coed’s murder, the University of Granada suspended its transfer program with UAEM and recalled its 17 other students.
“She was a foreign student and the visibility the case received” was high, Guerrero said. “There is no security policy clearly focused on preventing this type of crime. It gained visibility now because she was a foreign student, but what about other Mexican students?”
Fear began spreading across UAEM’s campus with the disappearance of Ramos, who was last seen near the Chamilpa campus in Cuernavaca, the university’s largest campus, on Feb. 20. Her body was found in an industrial area on the outskirts of the town on March 3.
Mexican authorities on March 5 arrested Ramos’ ex-boyfriend and schoolmate after her bag and ID were allegedly found in his home.
They withheld the accused killer’s full name and identified him only as Jared Alejandro ‘N’.
He is accused of strangling her in a fit of jealousy, according to a Morelos state official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
On the same day that Ramos’ accused killer was arrested, Toledo went missing about 25 miles away in Mazatepec.
Her body was found hours later three miles away.
She had been shot to death.
The motive in her killing remains unclear, but police said they are looking for two suspects who fled the state.
“I think one of the big questions in Mexico is: the killer is caught – OK – but how far will this go?” the Morelos official said. “What protection measures can be offered to women?”
At least one teen girl linked to the college also went missing and was found dead this year.
On May 24, high school student Michelle Fuentes, 15, disappeared in Yautepec.
Her mother, a UAEM academic, said she had gone out at midday to buy art supplies and never made it home, according to El Pais.
Her body was found on June 2 in Tepoztlán, a popular tourist town 30 miles away.
Her cause of death has not been released.
“Do we really have to normalize the fact that . . . women have been murdered at the same university . . . over the last year — and that no one is doing anything? To those of you living there, studying at that place: why is no one doing anything?” Tacoronte’s sister, Lara Tacoronte, told The Post.
UAEM did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
The post College of the damned: 3 female students at Mexican university murdered in last 7 months appeared first on New York Post.
