What investigators found inside the house
Five members of a Venezuelan family were discovered dead from gunshot wounds on Friday inside a single-storey home on Mercedes Street in Mariano Acosta, in the Buenos Aires district of Merlo, according to judicial sources cited in the reporting. The victims were the mother, Evelyn Carolina Rivero Mejías, 41, and her children Dan, 14, Alan, 12, and Nicole Valentina, 10. The father, Mahatma Eyvind Soihit Meza, 44, was also found dead.[S1][S2]
According to the accounts, the four other bodies each carried two bullet wounds to the head, while the man had a single wound to the left temple. A 9-millimetre Sarsilmaz pistol, the only firearm located in the property, lay between his legs. All five were in the same room when they were found, and investigators' initial hypothesis is that the father shot his wife and children before turning the weapon on himself.[S1][S2]
The family had arrived roughly a month earlier from the nearby town of Marcos Paz and were new to a low-rise neighborhood of grass verges and light traffic. Sources said the couple was in crisis and that the woman, a systems analyst, had recently told her husband she intended to separate. Neighbors reported hearing gunshots in the early hours of Thursday, before dawn.[S1][S2]
Understand this article deeper
How the deaths came to light
The alarm was raised because Rivero Mejías did not turn up at her workplace. A colleague who could not reach her went to the address; when nobody answered the door, the man looked through a window and saw the bodies inside, then called emergency services. A neighbor who approached the house on Friday was described as going into shock at the sight of the five bodies on the floor.[S1][S2]
Officers from the sixth police station in Mariano Acosta carried out the first steps at the scene and notified the duty prosecutor's office. The case was opened as an inquiry into the causes of death and assigned to Functional Instruction Unit No. 8 of Morón, led by prosecutors Adriana Suárez Corripio and Nicolás Filippini. Forensic police worked at the property, and autopsies were ordered to establish the sequence of events and when the deaths occurred.[S1][S2]
A neighborhood left in disbelief
Residents described a quiet, hard-working area and said the family was known only by sight. One neighbor said the news had hit like a bucket of cold water, while another recalled seeing the mother for the last time the previous Monday, often riding her bicycle and always friendly. A man whose mother lives next door said he was heartbroken and that the family, being Venezuelan, was recognized around the street but never imagined to be at the center of such an event.[S1]
