College of the damned: 3 female students at Mexican university murdered in last 7 months
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 o...