BROCKTON —
To her parents, crying over her loss in the Ecuadorian countryside, she was a beloved daughter.
To her sister living in Brockton, she was a hard-working mother and, quite simply, a good person.
“She was good. She was good,” the victim’s sister, Maria Emilia Palaguachi, repeated softly, when asked to describe her sister, Maria Avelina Palaguachi-Cela.
“She was humble, calm,” said Manuel Tenezaca, Palaguachi’s husband and brother-in-law of the victim.
To neighbors, she was a hard-working mother who came and went in a pickup truck with her 2-year-old child, occasionally asking for help translating mail written in English.
They learned her name only later, when her body and that of her toddler son were found in a trash bin behind the green multi-family home on Warren Avenue where they lived.
Friends knew Maria Avelina Palaguachi-Cela, 25, as a kind woman who never quarreled with anyone, and whose death – she was beaten and suffered fatal head and brain injuries – made no sense. The death of her son, Brian Palaguachi, 2, was an even greater shock. Authorities say he died as his mother did – of blows to the head.
“She’s a nice, funny girl. I never see her fight. I never see her drunk. I never see her (use) drugs,” said Aurelio Guaman, who said he was a friend of the victim. He is no relation to Luis Guaman, who is wanted for questioning in connection with the deaths but has not been charged with any crime.
To area domestic violence groups, Maria Palaguachi-Cela could be a tragic example of an immigrant woman who felt too isolated to seek help.
Undocumented people may live invisible lives in the United States, with little paperwork attached to their names, unable to access food stamps, work opportunities and other benefits, said Marcia Szymanski, director of Family Health Services at Health Imperatives in Brockton. Palaguachi-Cela’s immigration status is unknown.
The bodies of Palaguachi-Cela and her toddler son were found on Feb. 13 by an anonymous female caller. On Friday, authorities in Ecuador apprehended Luis Guaman, a roommate of the victims and the last to see them alive. He is charged there with forgery and fraudulent use of a passport. Authorities say he flew to his native country about two and a half hours after the bodies were discovered.
He was captured by Palaguachi-Cela’s family, who had reached out to one of his ex-girlfriends and told her to phone him and offer money. When he came to pick it up, Palaguachi-Cela’s family apprehended him and dragged him to a police station.
Prosecutors say a roommate told police that in the days before the homicides, he heard the victim argue with Guaman and tell him she did not love him. Prosecutors have charged that roommate with misleading police, saying he saw Guaman’s plane ticket but failed to mention it to police.
Palaguachi-Cela is survived in Ecuador by two daughters who are about 4 and 6 years old, according to Manuel Jesus Caguana, her live-in boyfriend and Brian’s father.
On Thursday, the family’s tragedy was compounded by the death of Palaguachi-Cela’s 25-year-old nephew. Luis Gilberto Tenezaca Palaguachi fell to his death from the roof of a home he was working on in New Bedford.
He had traveled north about three months ago to work and send money home to his wife and two young children, according to his father, Manuel Tenezaca.
Tenezaca is also the brother-in-law of Palaguachi-Cela.
“I told him, ‘Don’t come here, son. I’m here and I want to send you money,’” he said.
But his son insisted, Tenezaca said.
“‘I am still very young. I want to work with my own hands to give something to my children’,” his father remembered him saying.
Tenezaca said the difficulty of life in his home country has driven his son and other parents to come to the United States.
“It’s very difficult over there,” Tenezaca said Thursday. “That’s why the boys come here, putting their lives at risk.”
The young man’s widow, speaking through sobs from Ecuador, said she desperately wanted to bring her husband’s body back home.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen now, because he was working there to help us,” said Maria Isabel Quispe Zumba, speaking in Spanish during a phone interview.
Zumba said her two children are 6 years old and 2 years, 4 months.
“(He was) too good,” Zumba said of her husband. “That’s why he left here.”
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