EscucharGUATEMALA CITY - A Guatemalan doctor, Ricardo Orellana, husband of a United States citizen who was kidnapped and murdered last January, died yesterday from a gunshot to the head in the general hospital of San Juan de Dios, in this capital city.
Sources from the medical center explained to the press that the attack upon the doctor occurred on the fourth floor of the building at 8:00 a.m.
At least one unidentified suspect shot the surgeon from behind and had been seen by witnesses engaged in a heated argument with Orellana on one of the center's entrance ramps.
The union director for the hospital, Eleazar Guzmán, commented that he heard the shot and ran to where the physician lay mortally
wounded and rushed him to the operating room where he died after two consecutive cardiac arrests.
The director of the National Civil Police (PNC in Spanish) was at the scene of the crime and ordered security forces to cordon off the area in hopes of catching the killer.
Orellana, 31, had specialized in surgery. For now, neither the motive nor the identity of the attacker are known.
Guzmán, the secretary for disputes of the Workers Union of the General Hospital San Juan de Dios, said that on initiatives of the hospital, the emergency room and outside assistance operations were closed to observe three days of mourning.
The victim was the husband of U.S. citizen Danita González Plank, who was kidnapped on January 7 together with her daughter Hasey Patricia, in the western city of Quetzaltenango.
González was found murdered seven days later in another part of that city while her daughter was left in critical condition in a park.
For the kidnapping and murder of González, who was 32, five Guatemalans and two Salvadorans were arrested, according to the PNC.
