The National Police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Paraguay are investigating the murder of 31-year-old María Celeste Colmán, whose body was found Tuesday night in a wooded area in the Ita Yvate’i company, in Nueva Italia, Central Department. The victim had a slash wound to the neck, according to preliminary reports, and an autopsy is awaited to confirm whether she was pregnant.
Prosecutor Viviana Llano, who is handling the case, initially said the body was found by chance by the suspect’s mother, who was looking for a lost cow. However, Commissioner Flaminio Quinteros, head of Crime Investigation for the Central Department, stated that this version has been superseded by new evidence.
According to Quinteros, the alleged perpetrator, the victim’s partner, confessed the crime to a close friend. “Apparently, he gave information to a friend that he proceeded to inflict knife wounds on the victim, supposedly because she was pregnant and he did not agree with that,” the commissioner said. The friend then alerted the suspect’s mother, who led police to where the body was.
The prosecutor ordered the suspect’s detention and the friend’s questioning as a witness. During the early morning, police executed a search warrant at the accused’s residence, seizing clothes that were in a washing machine, several mobile phones—including one that had belonged to the victim—and a motorcycle reported stolen in Alto Paraná. The items were sent for forensic analysis.
The case, initially treated as a body discovery, is now being investigated as femicide. The prosecution awaits the autopsy and forensic results to clarify the circumstances of the death.