Santo Domingo.– The early hours of December 1st were marked by pain for the family of José Manuel Maceo Sánchez, a 24-year-old whose life was extinguished in a matter of seconds in the Hato Nuevo sector.
At 1:08 in the morning, Stephanie Espinal received the call she never thought she would hear: “They killed José Manuel“.
“He shot him in the forehead, killed him instantly”, she said through tears, remembering the moment.
With her one-year-and-eight-month-old baby in her arms, she desperately went to her partner’s parents’ house, still not understanding that her life had changed forever.
José Manuel was sharing with siblings and cousins, laughing, conversing, enjoying a family moment. No one in that grocery store imagined that a bullet would surprise him without warning. A single shot, straight to the forehead, ended his life instantly.
His brother, José Augusto Maceo, recounts with confusion and anger that José Manuel had nothing to do with the conflict that ended in tragedy. “He was there, but the problem wasn’t with him. It was a guard and two kids from Villa Linda,” he explained.
According to the family, days before, a heated argument had occurred between a corporal of the Dominican Republic Navy and two young people from the Villa Linda sector, where the uniformed man allegedly slapped one of them. That conflict resurfaced the early morning of the incident, causing an exchange of gunfire between the corporal and the two civilians.
In the midst of that chaos, José Manuel was caught, not being part of the fight, without even knowing how it had started. There he fell, a victim of a foreign conflict.
Your family demands answers. They ask that the authorities immediately clarify what happened and that the culprit receive the full weight of the law. They also expect the prompt action of the National Institute of Forensic Sciences to be able to give him a burial.
“A young worker, father, brother, and friend who, according to his family, was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said his brother, José Augusto.
