A church minister and four members of his congregation have been arrested after a 25-year-old woman allegedly pushed onto a bonfire because she was ‘possessed’ by the devil. Mum-of-two Vilma Trujillo Garcia, 25, died on Tuesday – five days after being rushed to hospital in the Nicaraguan capital Managua with first degree burns over 80% of her body.
The five suspects, including 23-year-old church minister Juan Gregorio Rocha Romero, were held after Vilma’s grieving husband Reynaldo Peralta claimed she had been stripped naked and tied up next to the bonfire before being pushed on top of it.
The disturbing incident happened in the rural community of El Cortezal in north-eastern Nicaragua.
Mr Rocha Romero, a pastor at the Assemblies of God Church, is claiming the dead woman threw herself on the flames to rid herself of “bad spirits” inside her.
He told a local paper: “God told her he was going to remove that bad spirit from her and asked us to start a fire because that’s where the spirit was going to be expelled.”
Insisting no-one had touched Vilma, he added: “We were praying when we looked at her and saw she was on fire.”
But one of the four alleged accomplices – Eneyda del Socorro Orozco Tellez – is said to have told investigators during questioning: “God made a revelation to me.
“He told me to make a bonfire on the church patio and said we should take Vilma and tie up next to the flames and pray so that the devil left her sick body and threw itself on the fire.”
Daily newspaper La Prensa said a police report on the tragedy had concluded the church minister had ordered worshippers to gather up firewood and start praying for her before his alleged accomplices threw her onto the flames.
Another of the five detainees, Franklin Jarquin Hernandez, told the paper Vilma had been possessed by a ‘bad spirit’ after committing adultery.
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