‘Illicit affair’ slay in Army
Vic’s kin sues US for $10M
A young Panamian woman was cold-bloodedly murdered by her Army sergeant boyfriend three years ago — and now her family has filed a $10 million lawsuit against the American government.
Vanesa Itzel Rodriguez Chavarria was killed in 2014 by her then-paramour, Master Sgt. Omar Velez-Pagan, who beat her to death and then drove his vehicle over her body multiple times.
Velez-Pagan, who was married, had been to the Central American nation to help train its police officers.
The sergeant, drunk and jacked up on steroids, halfburied his lover’s body in a ditch near a Panamanian farm after a violent encounter with her.
The two had been arguing when Velez-Pagan — who carried on multiple extramarital relationships during his deployment to Panama — pummeled Rodriguez Chavarria, 25, during an argument inside a US Embassy-owned Toyota he was driving.
“She actually hit me in the face,” Velez-Pagan testified at his murder trial at Fort Bragg, NC, according to The Fayetteville Observer.
“I punched her back. In the face.”
He claimed Rodriguez Chavarria had gotten out of the car during their battle, and the vehicle hit her accidentally, according to the report.
But the young woman’s blood stained the inside of the car, which a panicked Velez-Pagan then used “to repeatedly run over the body of [Rodriguez Chavarria] to cover up the murder to make it appear her death was caused by a traffic accident,” her family said in the court papers. They are suing the Army and the Department of Defense in addition to her killer.
Velez-Pagan was sentenced in 2016 by a military court to 30 years in prison for the June 23, 2014, killing.
The woman’s father detailed the crime in an emotional letter to then-President Barack Obama posted on Facebook the year before Velez-Pagan’s trial.
“After savagely beating her to death, he repeatedly ran a car over her body, then dug a pit in order to [bury] and conceal the body and the evidence,” Rogelio Rodriguez wrote.
He accused the United States of protecting VelezPagan in its embassy and then removing him from Panama.
“Mr. President, you cannot talk about democracy and respect for human rights if your government permits this type of abuse,” he wrote in 2015.
The family calls the murder “and cruel treatment” of their daughter a violation of international law. The Army declined to comment.