Man burnt ex-girlfriend alive in town square

A Venezuelan man accused of burning his ex-girlfriend alive in a town square in Peru last year has been extradited to Lima, authorities said Tuesday.

Sergio Tarache Parra stands accused of dousing 18-year-old Katherine Gomez with gasoline and setting her alight on a central square in the Peruvian capital in March 2023.

She had broken up with him days earlier.

Tarache was tracked down and arrested in Colombia the following month.

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

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

Prosecutors are requesting life in prison for Tarache.

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, though not one of the highest rates per 100,000 people.

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.