Nine members of a drug-trafficking organization have pleaded guilty in the kidnap and murder of an Atlanta-area mom who was tortured and her body burned.
Rossana Delgado — a 37-year-old rideshare driver and mother of two — was “lured” to the Plaza Fiesta mall in DeKalb County on April 16, 2021, in the belief it was for a shopping trip, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Instead, she was tortured at several locations in the following days before being killed, dismembered and burned at a cabin in Gilmer County, according to Appalachian Judicial Circuit District Attorney B. Alison Sosebee.
The cabin had been booked through an online vacation rental company using a stolen identity.
How Delgado was known to the members of the drug gang was not immediately clear, but her murder showed evidence of being planned.
“They subsequently concealed and destroyed evidence of the murder of Delgado,” the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.
“Additionally, associates of the [organization] secured transportation and facilitated the fleeing of associates of the [organization] to Mexico to prevent their apprehension,” the agency added.
Delgado called her husband, Yhony Castro, on the day she was abducted and told him she was dropping off her last passenger and then heading home for the day, 11Alive reported.
But he became worried when she never showed up and traced her last moves through her phone, finding a bloody face mask at one of the places she was taken.
Castro then alerted police about the shocking find.
In May 2021, three suspects were arrested in Reynosa, Mexico — Oscar Garcia, Megan Colone and Juan Antonio Vega.
A month later, Juan Ayala-Rodriguez was arrested in Durango, Mexico, and extradited to the US, according to the GBI.
The other five suspects — Eva Galicia Martinez, Terri Amanda Garner, Patrick Harvard, Calvin Harvard and Shawn Callaway — were arrested at various times during the probe.
Three other suspects have been identified but have yet to be arrested: Mario Albert Barbosa-Juarez, Carolina Jazmin Rodriguez-Ramirez and Maria Katherine Encarnacion.
“This matter not only spanned across numerous local and state jurisdictions, but also involved the assistance of the federal government in extraditing defendants from Mexico,” Sosebee said.
A Gilmer grand jury returned an indictment against 14 defendants in February 2022. Officials not identified the two other suspects in the indictment who either haven’t pleaded guilty or remain at large.
The nine people who entered guilty pleas did so before the trial was scheduled to begin May 1.
Garcia pleaded guilty to malice murder, kidnapping, concealing the death of another, removal of body parts, aggravated battery and violation of RICO. He was sentenced to life behind bars.
Ayala-Rodriguez and Vega pleaded guilty to kidnapping, concealing the death of another, aggravated battery and violation of the RICO act.
Ayala-Rodriguez was sentenced to life while Vega was sentenced to 70 years.
Colone, Martinez, Garner, Patrick Harvard, Calvin Harvard and Callaway all pleaded guilty to violation of the RICO act.
Colone was sentenced to 18 years in the slammer, while Martinez will serve 13 years. The other four were sentenced to an undisclosed amount of prison time followed by probation.
Barbosa-Juarez faces charges of malice murder, felony murder, kidnapping, concealing the death of another, removal of body parts, aggravated battery and violation of RICO.
Rodriguez-Ramirez and Encarnacion faces charges of felony murder, kidnapping and violation of RICO.
“It is my hope, even though this matter remains open, that the resolutions and sentences entered at this time will assist the family and loved ones of Rossana Delgado in beginning to obtain closure,” Sosebee said in a statement.