Ecuador Prisoner Accused in University Executive’s Murder Dies in Hospital

Galo Osorio, a detainee accused of participating in the murder of a Quito university finance director, died Saturday in a public hospital, Ecuador’s prison authority said Monday.

Osorio had been held in pretrial detention at the prison in Latacunga after his arrest on July 9 with five other people, including a teenager. Prosecutors accuse the group of involvement in the June 11 killing of Santiago Ávalos, financial director of the University of the Americas.

The prison service said an autopsy would establish the cause of Osorio’s death. It did not provide further details about his medical condition or the circumstances surrounding his hospitalization.

Prosecutors have said Osorio had a poor relationship with Ávalos because of audit actions launched by the university’s finance department. In the days before the killing, he allegedly asked other university employees to photograph the victim’s vehicle in its assigned parking area. Images were also taken of Ávalos at his workplace.

The investigation includes security-camera footage showing another defendant with the 17-year-old outside the university while they waited for Ávalos to leave in his vehicle. Prosecutors allege that the teenager carried out the killing and is being held in a juvenile detention center. Ecuador’s prisons have also remained a center of the country’s criminal-violence crisis, with about 600 inmates killed inside prisons since 2021 and hundreds of other deaths from illnesses such as tuberculosis reported over the past year.