BOGOTA, Colombia – A team of police investigators was following leads Feb. 2 as they worked a week after two priests were gunned down in suburb of the Colombian capital.
Father Rafael Reatiga Rojas, 34 and Father Richard Piffano Laguado, 36, were found dead in a vehicle Jan. 26 in Cuidad Kennedy by police after residents reported hearing gunshots, police Col. Jose Baquero said.
Witnesses told police they saw a man exit the car after the shooting and hop on a waiting motorcycle, Baquero said.
Media reports indicated the two priests, who worked as parish priests in Bogota’s suburbs, had traveled to the area to look at a used car one of them was considering buying.
Police have been unable to locate the car that was for sale or the $18,000 the priests had reportedly carried. Police suspect the killers stole the money and the car being sold.
Auxiliary Bishop Juan Cordoba Villota of Bucaramanga, Colombia, an official with the Colombian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, mourned the deaths in a statement.
He lamented that issues in Colombia “are being resolved by taking the lives of others.”