Loja-Writing
The residents of Zamora Avenue and Segundo Puertas Street were alarmed on Saturday afternoon by the crime that was reported in an English academy in that area of Loja.
When the police arrived, inside the academy were two dead men and two wounded, including a woman. A dog was also shot.
The Prosecutor’s Office indicated that apparently there was an altercation between the partners of that academy that ended in shots.
Lojano media have indicated these days that one of the partners fired because of his disagreement with the administrative management of the academy. Then he shot himself. So the case was ruled a murder-suicide.
The person who would have carried out the shooting was Manuel de Jesús Gallo Espinoza, a former priest who had a history of sexual abuse committed against a teenager in United States.
He fled from that country in 2003 and left behind his association with the church. In Loja he developed his life and was a member of an English teaching academy.
According to US portals, Gallo was wanted after his victim, a 15-year-old teenager, reported that the cleric abused him in the rectory of a church in Plainfield (New Jersey City). The case was dormant until an investigation was reopened after the case was highlighted by NJ Advance Media in July 2015.
Union County’s Crime Stoppers program was even offering up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of Gallo Espinoza. Tips could be given anonymously by phone, text, or online at www.uctip.org.
According to US media, Gallo Espinoza obtained a visa to return to the US in 2005, that is, three years later, without the knowledge of the New Jersey authorities.
The victim said Gallo Espinoza assaulted him in a bedroom in the rectory of St. Mary’s Church in Plainfield just before Easter 2003. He was then a member of the church’s youth group.
Less than two weeks later, a representative of Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Metuchen reported him to the prosecutor’s office.
In that same period, Gallo Espinoza was told by the archdiocese that he could no longer serve as a priest due to a claim of sexual abuse.
According to NJ.com, Gallo Espinoza admitted in a phone interview and in email exchanges with a reporter that the situation was a “mistake” and blamed his victim for seducing him.
Incident at an English academy in Loja ended with two deaths
“One thing I am aware of is that he was a teenager at the time, and it’s a big mistake for me. But I did not force him to do anything that he did not want … ”, Gallo Espinoza wrote.
He said that he was also depressed because he was away from his home country and was drunk at the time of the assault (rape).
Gallo’s body was taken for burial in the city of Macará, where he was from.
Byron Carreño, the other fatality, was buried in Loja and the other two victims receive medical care at a health home in the same city. (I)