Peruvian lawyer Helenn Giulianna Silva Padilla died at the age of 44 due to gunshots fired at her by a masked person while she was sitting with three of her friends at a roadside restaurant in northern Peru.
According to witnesses, a dark-helmeted gunman approached the metal grating around the Pikeitos roadside restaurant in the San Martín de Porres location, San José district of Pacasmayo province, at 5:55 pm on August 15th, where the woman was with three other people. He started to shoot; one round hit her in the head.
Fortunately, no one else was injured, and they took her to Tomás Lafora Hospital in the neighboring town of Guadalupe. Doctors stated that she passed away there. She had two children.
Two persons on a motorbike appeared before the murder, but unfortunately, the murderer managed to escape on that vehicle together with the second man who came earlier. In addition, it is said that the gunman was wearing a gray sweatshirt, a dark helmet, and blue cotton trousers. Local police have cordoned off the area and collected evidence. Depincri, the Pacasmayo Criminal Investigations Division, is handling the case.
Gen. Ricardo Espinoza Cuestas, chief of the La Libertad police region, noted in an interview with Diario Correo that a working hypothesis says that a man who was once her client, but was unsatisfied with the results of the case she handled and demanded money back, was threatening her. However, the information has not yet been proven.
Furthermore, authorities claim that at the moment no one can confirm that the murder had anything to do with her profession or whether she had any threats before. Thus, they are considering all possibilities.
According to a Trome report, investigators think the suspect likely followed her. They will question the three people she was sitting with and review her recent case files, phone calls, and messages. One of the recent cases she conducted was the protection of a young man who lost his left leg after a crash with a car in May 2024, where three policemen were involved.
Surveillance cameras also captured the shooting, which spread rapidly on social media in Peru.
At this point, the La Libertad bar association issued its condolences because of the death of their member. Notably, La Libertad is a coastal region where extortion and contract killings have become more frequent lately; 132 killings have occurred there since the beginning of the year, including seven deaths in Pacasmayo province.
