crime

Grisly death investigated

The severed leg of a man was discovered in the middle of the road yesterday at the end of the Corredor Sur. The Ministerio Público and the Dirección de Investigación Judicial (DIJ) are trying to figure out what happened.

A ski mask, a pair of handcuffs, a bouquet of flowers, an ID card in the name of Panamanian Abdiel Alfonso Tovares Quintana and a Mitsubishi Nativa were found nearby. Hours later, in the Montería de Pedregal area, police discovered a mutilated body in a plastic bag, with the head bandaged in gray adhesive tape. They suspect it was Tovares. If that were the case, according to police, then they had found the alleged leader of the gang Los Perros de San Joaquín, who was believed to be involved with four murders and was sentenced to prison in 1999 for stealing an armored truck. Tovares went free in 2005.

Preliminary versions of the story indicate that Tovares was run over on the Corredor by Richard Kennedy. Kennedy picked up the body and took it to his house in Don Bosco, where he put it in a bag. He then changed cars, drove away and later abandoned the body in the Montería area.

Kennedy told police that the victim appeared suddenly in the road, bandaged and handcuffed, circumstances that are now under investigation. Police are not discounting the possibility that the case is related to another in which a man's body was found yesterday in Pacora, also bound with gray adhesive tape, and with a bullet in the head.