Mexican prosecutors say they have identified a possible suspect in the killing of Claudia Tacoronte, a 21-year-old Spanish university student who was murdered last weekend in Cuautla, in the state of Morelos, located about 110 kilometers (68 miles) south of Mexico City. Officials told Telemundo News the suspect goes by the nickname “El Trompas.” Security camera footage from a local cultural center, near where Tacoronte was last seen alive, shows a man in a white T-shirt and black backpack moving in and out of frame before leaving the area. Investigators believe he attacked the young woman with a bladed weapon and fled.
Tacoronte, from the Canary Islands, was studying early childhood education at the University of Granada and had arrived in Mexico just three weeks earlier as part of an academic exchange program. She was killed on the night of September 12. Authorities are treating her death as a femicide—a term used in Mexico and Latin America for the gender-based murder of a woman. Notably, the town’s former mayor was arrested earlier this year in a crackdown on officials linked to organized crime, though no connection to this case has been confirmed. Spain’s embassy and consulate say they are assisting the victim’s family.
In a viral video, Tacoronte’s sister, Lara, tearfully questioned how such killings have become normalized in Mexico, where roughly 28,000 people were murdered and nearly 11,500 went missing in 2025, according to official figures.
Read the full story from Telemundo for more details.
Source: Lo último de la investigación sobre el feminicidio de Claudia Tacoronte en México: imágenes muestran al sospechoso (telemundo.com).
Image: West Midlands Police from West Midlands, United Kingdom, BY-SA 2.0 (via Openverse).