By: Staff Writer
June 23, 2023
The Barrio 18 gang kills 46 women inmates in a Honduras prison in the worst prison riot in recent memory with President Castro calling it a “monstrous” attack.
The gang members began spraying their victims with gunfire, hacking them with machetes and then locking survivors in their cells and dousing them with flammable liquid, officials have said.
The carnage in Tuesday’s riot was the worst atrocity at a women’s prison in recent memory, something President Xiomara Castro called “monstrous.”
Relatives said inmates at the facility had been threatened for weeks by members of the notorious Barrio 18 gang.
Chillingly, the gang members were able to arm themselves with prohibited weapons, brush past guards and attack; they even carried locks to shut their victims inside, apparently to burn them to death. The intensity of the fire left the walls of the cells blackened and beds reduced to twisted heaps of metal.
It is understood that a fight broke out between rival gangs, after which one gang set a cell alight.
Officials say most of those who died were killed in the fire but others were shot, stabbed or beaten to death.
An investigation is under way to determine how the inmates managed to smuggle automatic weapons and machetes into the jail.
President Castro, who last year launched a crackdown on gangs, said on social media that she would take “drastic measures” in response to this horrific mass murder.
She has dismissed Security Minister Ramón Sabillón and replaced him with the head of the national police force, Gustavo Sánchez.
Survivors of the deadly incident told local media that it was triggered by rivalries between two of Central America’s most notorious criminal organisations: the Barrio 18 Street Gang and MS-13.
They said members of one gang had been taunting their rivals, who then set fire to the mattresses in the cell holding those taunting them.
Videos posted on social media showed a huge cloud of grey smoke rising from the women’s prison, which is located about 25km north of the capital, Tegucigalpa, and holds approximately 900 inmates.
While the warring factions are locked up in different parts of the jail, the wings are located close to each other.
The unrest broke out early in the morning local time on Tuesday.
Survivors said that many of those who died had been seeking refuge from the flames in a bathroom. Their burnt bodies were found piled on top of each other.
Others were shot dead and stabbed by gang members in the corridors and a prison courtyard.
Some of the victims are not thought to have been linked to either of the two gangs but were caught up in the incident.
Among them is a former police cadet who was serving a 15-year prison sentence after confessing to killing a fellow police officer.
Another of those killed was only days away from being released after serving her sentence for kidnapping.
There were ample warnings ahead of Tuesday’s tragedy, according to Johanna Paola Soriano Euceda, who was waiting outside the morgue in Tegucigalpa for news about her mother, Maribel Euceda, and sister, Karla Soriano. Both were on trial for drug trafficking but were held in the same area as convicted prisoners.
Soriano Euceda said they had told her Sunday that “they (Barrio 18 members) were out of control, they were fighting with them all the time. That was the last time we talked.”
Another woman told reporters, who did not want to give her name for fear of reprisals, said she was waiting for news about a friend, Alejandra Martínez, 26, who was been held in the ill-fated Cell Block One on robbery charges.
“She told me the last time I saw her on Sunday that the (Barrio) 18 people had threatened them, that they were going to kill them if they didn’t turn over a relative,” she said.