At 7.15am on 4 September last year, Yuri Melini stepped onto the street from his mother’s house in a suburb of Guatemala City. A man standing across the road called him.
The man had a lost look, and had the dress and manner of someone from rural parts. He was holding a folded newspaper. “Chh chh,” called the man, and Yuri Melini crossed the street to help him. When Yuri Melini was one metre away, the man took a gun out from behind the newspaper. Yuri Melini turned to run, but the man shot him, and then shot him again, six more times. Yuri Melini collapsed and the man approached him. Yuri Melini lay there, awaiting the “coup de grâce”, but it never came. The man left.
