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Honduras Miss World Contestant Found Murdered With Sister


FILE - Maria Jose Alvarado is crowned the new Miss Honduras in San Pedro, Sula, Honduras, April 26, 2014.
FILE - Maria Jose Alvarado is crowned the new Miss Honduras in San Pedro, Sula, Honduras, April 26, 2014.

A Honduran beauty queen has been found murdered just days before she was due to compete in the Miss World pageant in London, police said on Wednesday.

The bodies of Maria Jose Alvarado, 19, and her sister Sofiawere found buried near a river in the mountainous region of Santa Barbara, about 180 km (110 miles) from the capital Tegucigalpa, said Leandro Osorio, head of the criminal investigation unit.

Alvarado, a student who aspired to become a career diplomat, had been due to take part in the Miss World events that start on Thursday and culminate in the final in London on Dec. 14.

She and her sister had been missing since Thursday, when they were seen leaving a party in a car without a license plate.

“I can confirm that the Alvarado sisters were found ... We also have the murder weapon and the vehicle in which they were transported to the site where they were buried,” Osorio told local television.

National Police agents escort Plutarco Antonio Ruiz (2nd-L), the boyfriend of Miss Honduras Maria Jose Alvarado's sister, in Santa Barbara, 200 kms north of Tegucigalpa, Nov. 18, 2014.
National Police agents escort Plutarco Antonio Ruiz (2nd-L), the boyfriend of Miss Honduras Maria Jose Alvarado's sister, in Santa Barbara, 200 kms north of Tegucigalpa, Nov. 18, 2014.

Interior Minister Arturo Corrales told Honduran media that Plutarco Ruiz, the boyfriend of the beauty queen's sister, was responsible for the crime. Police arrested Ruiz and another man on Tuesday, confiscating two pistols.

Alvarado was crowned Miss Honduras World 2014 in April, beating 18 other contestants to the top spot. She could not live without lip gloss or the Web site Wikipedia.org according to her official bio on the Miss World competition page.

Organizers of the event, which began in the United Kingdom in the 1950s, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Honduras is the world's most violent country with a murderrate above 90 people per 100,000, about double the rate of its closest peers Venezuela, Belize and El Salvador.

Mexico's drug cartels have expanded into Honduras in recent years, making the impoverished Central American nation a major thoroughfare for trafficking South America cocaine to the United States and driving a surge in violence.

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    Reuters

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