Brian Campeau admits to murdering and kidnapping Sofia Delgado

While the municipality of Candelaria, in Valle del Cauca, is mourning for Sofia Delgado, a 12-year-old girl whose body was found this Thursday after being missing for 18 days, new information is emerging about the case that has shocked Colombia. Has shaken it. Brian Campo is the name of a confessed murderer. The 32-year-old man, a neighbor of the Delgado family in the town of Villagorgona, a few kilometers from the city of Cali, kidnapped the minor on September 29, murdered her and took the body to a sugarcane field. According to the description he gave to the authorities, he buried her there. In a private hearing, the Attorney General’s Office charged him Friday afternoon with the crimes of aggravated femicide, simple kidnapping and concealment of evidence, to which he pleaded guilty.

Although the Institute of Legal Medicine is still conducting studies to confirm the details of Sophia’s death and define whether sexual violence occurred – a hypothesis that authorities are considering – public opinion now rests on justice. . The crimes with which the prosecutor’s office charges him could, if convicted at trial, result in a total of more than 50 years in prison. Prosecutors asked the judge to release the second initially held suspect, the Campos, because no evidence was found linking him to the crime.

Campeau’s profile has alarmed the community. On the one hand, local media have announced that he was accused of allegedly raping another minor in 2018, which is why he was jailed for a year. In that case, he was released because the terms had expired. On the other hand, Dilian Francisca Toro, the governor of Valle del Cauca, revealed that a few hours before Sofia’s disappearance, Campo had tried to kidnap another minor in his pet shop.

On September 29, Sofia left her home in Villagorgona to buy food for her pet. The store, owned by Campao, was a few blocks away. A security camera shows the girl visiting the premises where, according to the alleged author, in her story – which was accessed by the magazine – Week—, he locked her up and later hit her on the head. According to her version, the man did not always sexually abuse her, but immediately took her to a sugarcane field – a sugarcane plantation – near the city, where he buried her. About three weeks later, police found the body, which matched the minor’s DNA “99.9%,” officials said.

Cristian Delgado, Sofia’s father, told the media this Friday that Campo “was not from the municipality.” “I think he just came. We used to pass through the premises every day, but we never had any contact with them,” he indicated. For her part, mother Lady Zuniga mourned her daughter’s murder: “I never imagined this in my life. Now it was our turn in this matter. “I pray to God that justice is done, that the full weight of the law falls on them.” On Thursday afternoon, an angry mob destroyed Ocampo’s shop and house. The mayor of the municipality ordered three days of mourning over the death of the minor.

President Gustavo Petro has condemned the incident on the social network X: “The girls and boys of our country do not deserve a message of solidarity from this social network when their rights are not respected or protected. Children deserve that their dreams never end. We cannot allow more news like Sofia. According to forensic medicine data, more than 370 minors have been murdered in Colombia between January and August.

debate on life imprisonment

Sophia’s murder has reignited the debate in the country over whether a law should be made to give life imprisonment to child abusers and murderers, which the Constitutional Court has not said is legal in any case , by repealing a law in this sense in 2021. The first to consider this was Governor Toro, who, in his condolence message to the Delgado family, said: “We should not think about imposing life sentences for monsters who murder children. I should think.”

This discussion reached the plenary session in the House of Representatives this Thursday. Julián Peñado from Antioquia (Liberal Party) and Erica Tatiana Sánchez from Ecuador (League of Anti-Corruption Rulers) even called for the death penalty, which is explicitly prohibited in the Constitution for child rapists. “Here we must operate with the full scope of the law. That is why the rules, including the Constitution, should be amended if necessary,” Peñado said. Sánchez called on the Constitutional Court and the national government to “look at what can be done legally so that anyone who touches a child does not have to fear for his life.”

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