Yesterday we told you about the frantic search in Orange Walk for the missing marketing officer, who vanished on Saturday night near the BSI factory.
That search ended with terminal certainty today after the La Inmaculada employee was found dead. Jomarie Lanza reports
Just before midday, the Vasquez family's nightmare in Orange Walk was confirmed after they received the call from a tour guide out on the New River that Oswaldo Vasquez's decomposing body was seen floating behind the BSI factory. After three and a half days of searching through bushes and overgrown picador roads when the father of two didn't make it home on Saturday night - the search ended today with his body being driven off in a scenes of crime pickup.
The family is still trying to process the events which unfolded leading up to his disappearance and untimely mysterious death.
Voice of: Soriada Perez, Relative
"I found out that my sister in law lost track of him Saturday night she came into the house and when she came I told my mother in law Lenny reach with the two children and then I told her and Oswaldo? And she said Oswaldo stepped out of the vehicle and we were after him and afterwards he was close to an ASR vehicle and I really didn't see where he got to after that. I don't know if he went into the vehicle or he went by the bushes because the area is very dark. She had the two children with him so one spell she went after him pulling him back to the vehicle telling him come back in the vehicle babe come back. And he went back into the vehicle because she had the children with her Luke and Lin and she can't leave the children there and totally go after him because then she also had to look after the children so she had told us that she told her brother that you know what I'll go home because they must have took him home and she checked and he wasn't home."
And to His wife's dismay Oswaldo never made it home. She tried calling his cell phone several times and when she finally got through an L& R security guard picked up and told her that her husband was in fact in the area but was behaving in a violent manner. The family moved quickly to locate him, but when they got there things took another mysterious turn.
Soriada Perez, Relative
"Now when they got there they said the watch man told them he is no longer here he went off and stoned me with his phone and wallet. And then they asked him how? The watchman said he went and ended by the back gate. And we said how that's impossible because we were there searching, we were there with tennis and long pants and it was impossible for us to go through the side he went because that side is full of branches and prickle he would have stumbled immediately any drunken person would have stumbled immediately. That night my husband and the four others that went to pick him up they searched that area and they didn't come home until two in the morning searching. My mother in law and sister in law stayed at their home and my husband and my son came back and I told him you know what don't he what he must have fallen asleep somewhere and by 6 7 in the morning when the sun is up he will find his home because he has never slept outside of his home."
But as the hours went by Oswaldo never returned home and his families concern for his well being quickly turned into worry and panic, as they found themselves searching in areas far too bushy for him to be able to make his way through
Voice of: Melinda Montez, Sister in Law of Deceased
"So when we went all into the bushes, my little brother says when they went there alll around where the watchman said my brother in law went he said that at the back he saw a spot there where it seemed that they lifted something from there as if someone was lying down there. And I told my little sister that we need to report this cause this is not correct and I heard the reocording and this is not correct cause how in the world will you come and this man will give you his wallet and phone and he will tell you that he went behind the bushes. If there is anybody speculating that things are not like that I ask them to come to that spot and go around those bushes so you can see and feel the way we are feeling right now and we are thinking because it's common sense that he wouldn't have gone through there and if he had gone there he would have gotten hurt and stayed there."
And when they got the call that Oswaldo was found, and the state in which he was, the family now questions whether it was foul play:
Melinda Montez, Sister in Law of Deceased
"So now when we went there and they called the police and so forth and as you know when you find a body they will appear and find a way to reach there because they need to get to that body right. And then we went there and my brother was there and my brother knows his brother in law because he lived with my sister for ten years he is family."
Reporter-
"The condition in which the body was found?"
Melinda Montez, Sister in Law of Deceased
"He has a big opening on the side here and I believe if a crocodile was eating him he wouldn't have a big split here you know and then one of hands a piece here only from the shoulder here to like the elbow only that was there the face was actually gone and the skull was set to the back and it's a really horrible sight you know to find a person we cared for a person that is familiar with us in a condition like that."
One person has since been detained for questioning. Vasquez leaves behind a son and a daughter.
