Man arrested for burning ex-girlfriend alive in Peru

A man who burned his ex-girlfriend alive on a town square in Peru has been tracked down in Colombia and arrested, the government in Lima said Wednesday, April 12.

The man, Venezuelan Sergio Tarache Parra, 19, stands accused of dousing 18-year-old Katherine Gomez with gasoline and setting her alight on a central square in Lima on March 18.

She had broken up with him days earlier.

Gomez was admitted to the hospital with burns to 60 percent of her body and died after six days of agony in a case that shocked Peruvians.

Peru's interior ministry said Tarache would be transferred from Colombia to Peru to be tried.

Security cameras captured Gomez's attacker fleeing the scene of the crime, and Peruvian police offered a reward equivalent to $12,500 (P690,000) for information leading to his capture.

An Interpol red notice had been issued for Tarache's arrest, according to Peru's consulate in Bogota.

Peru, a country of 33 million, registered 136 femicides in 2022 and similar numbers in previous years, according to official data.

The country has one of the region's highest femicide tallies in absolute numbers, according to the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, but not one of the highest rates per 100,000 people.

Also on Wednesday, officials said a 32-year-old nurse who was raped and tortured by work colleagues died after spending two weeks in hospital. Two men are under arrest.

In a crime similar to the one that claimed Gomez, a man boarded a bus in Lima in 2018, poured gasoline on his ex-girlfriend Eva Agreda, and set her alight. She died days later. (AFP)