Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, amid a public outcry over the killing of a former beauty queen and her ex-husband, said Wednesday that the killings appeared to be a targeted attack and not a random act of violence.
During a meeting on rampant crime with the country’s most violent cities, Maduro said the suggestion came from police investigators he had been speaking to since Monica Spear, 29, and Thomas Berry, 39, were gunned down on Monday night.
“That assassination seems more like a contract killing,” he said. “We have identified those involved in this assassination and we are going to look for them.”
But Maduro provided no evidence to support the theory.
Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters — including several popular writers and actors — took to the streets of Caracas to demand the government offer better way to combat what’s become one of the world’s highest murder rates.
“What’s happening here doesn’t happen anywhere else in Latin America and whoever says differently is simply lying,” Asier Cazalis, singer for the rock group Caramelos de Cianuro, told Televen television, according to the Miami Herald.
“I go to Columbia to work, I go to Mexico to work and it’s not even remotely like what’s happening here.”
Police have said the deadly shooting — which also left the couple’s 5-year-old daughter, Maya, wounded with a bullet in the leg — was a roadside robbery gone awry.
The killings were believed to be the latest in a pattern of late-night attacks that include disabling vehicles by placing obstacles on isolated roadways.
Spear, a soap-opera star who was crowned Miss Venezuela in 2004, and Berry were returning to Caracas after a vacation when their Toyota Corolla hit “a sharp object that had been placed on the highway,” Jose Gregorio Sierralta, director of the country’s investigative police, said.
Two tow trucks arrived to help with the blowout, but the gunmen emerged after the sedan was hoisted onto on of the trucks, police said.
The couple and their child locked themselves inside the car, but the bandits opened fire — putting at least six bullets into the vehicle, police said.
“They fired with viciousness,” Maduro said.
Spear and Berry, an adventure tour operator, were killed. Their daughter was treated for the gunshot wound to her leg, but has since returned with relatives in Caracas.
Police said five people, including some under the age of 18, were in custody and being questioned about the double murder.
Spear’s family told NBC News that they tried to coax the model, who most recently appeared on “Pasion Prohibida” for the Telemundo network, to leave her native Venezuela for the United States after she was robbed six times.
“She loved her country too much,” her brother, Ricardo Spear Mootz — who lives with his parents in Florida — told the news station. “It was her home.”
Berry, a British citizen, moved to Venezuela when he was 7 years old, but went to Florida after he was shot as a young man, the news station reported.
He eventually moved back to the South American country and met Spear. The couple divorced about two years ago, but remained close because of their daughter.
Spear and Berry celebrated the new year with a vacation trip that stretched between the beach and the plains, where Spear recorded a video herself riding a horse. The clip, which included her blowing a kiss to the camera, was posted on her Instagram account.
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“She was a person with dreams, and a person who worked really hard for what she wanted,” her brother said. “She was very humble.”
