Judge Orders Preventive Detention for Suspected Killer of Paola Buenrostro

Arturo N., accused of killing Paola Buenrostro, will remain in Mexico City's Oriente prison after a control judge ordered mandatory preventive detention.

The defense requested an extension of the constitutional period to determine his legal status. The court is scheduled to decide on Friday, Sept. 4, whether to formally bind him to trial for aggravated homicide.

Authorities arrested Arturo on Monday in Nicolás Romero, in the State of Mexico, following an investigation by Mexico City's prosecutor's office. Buenrostro was killed on Sept. 30, 2016. Prosecutors allege that Arturo hired her services that night and that she was shot several times after entering his car.

After Tuesday's hearing at the courts in the Doctores neighborhood, Kenya Cuevas, Buenrostro's friend and chosen family member, said court staff had discriminated against her. She also objected to the case being classified as homicide rather than transfemicide.

Cuevas said the prosecutor's office had failed to recognize the victims' gender identity. “The same prosecutor's office that represented this case today arrived with omissions, discriminating against our gender identity, calling the case homicide when in previous years it had been classified and discussed with the same prosecutor's office as femicide, since the Transfemicide Penal Code did not yet exist; however, the classification of aggravated homicide still existed,” she said.

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The same prosecutor's office that represented this case today arrived with omissions, discriminating against our gender identity, calling the case homicide when in previous years it had been classified and discussed with the same prosecutor's office as femicide, since the Transfemicide Penal Code did not yet exist; however, the classification of aggravated homicide still existed.