Consulate works to bring teenager’s body back to her native El Salvador
For the third time in a year, Alba Azucena Lopez will send a young Salvadorian immigrant home in a body bag.
It’s part of the job for Lopez, the consul general of El Salvador in Boston. This time, she is making arrangements for Blanca Lainez, a 19-year-old woman found dead inside an East Boston garage on June 15.
Lainez’ body was found by construction workers in a garage at 54 Princeton St. in East Boston. Police have not named any suspects and are asking for anyone with information about her death to contact them.
Lopez said she is working with Lainez’ family back home in San Vicente. The Boston Globe reported that Lainez left El Salvador at age 16, and most recently lived in Chelsea.
“We are so sorry about what is going on with this case and many others,” Lopez said. “And we are in solidarity of their families.”
Lopez didn’t know Lainez before she died, but mourned the loss of another young Salvadorian. Wilson Martinez was just 15 when he was killed in September, the target of a violent gang initiation ritual. He’d come from El Salvador just 2 1/2 years earlier. Another 15-year-old Salvadorian, Irvin Javier de Paz Castro, was also an MS-13 target murdered in September.
“They came here, seeking and working for a better opportunity for their life, and for some reason, they don’t achieve their dreams,” Lopez said.
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