"He humiliated, tortured, killed and abandoned." The victim, a young Latina, was 14 years old. The killer, 17

"He set a trap for a small and vulnerable girl," the judge snapped, "humiliated her, tortured her, killed her and left her there."

It was the most horrible crime that the magistrate, Cathy Serrette, says she has never tried.

The victim, Ariana Funes Díaz, was only 14 years old . The murderer, Josué Fuentes Ponce, 17. Last October he admitted his guilt. This Monday he has been sentenced to spend half a century in prison, practically all his life.

The Prosecutor's Office assures that Ponce participated with other boys in the murder of the teenager on April 18 in Riverdale, a suburb of Washington DC in the state of Maryland.

They tricked her into a tunnel , ordered her to undress, beat her with a baseball bat and stabbed her with a machete, according to The Washington Post.

According to the police, they killed her because they feared she would report the robbery and kidnapping a man in an empty house in the vicinity committed only a few hours earlier by a group she allegedly was also part of.

The man said he was kicked and beaten with the handle of a machete, made him take off his shirt to prove he had no gangster tattoos, and was released after robbing him. According to her testimony, a young woman begged the rest to stop. The police believe it was Funes Díaz. The next day I was dead.

“ They decided that he had to die, ” said the prosecutor, “the defendant had a machete, his friend had a bat. He was a brutal murderer without mercy. He is absolutely guilty for what he has done. ”

The attack was recorded on camera.

The other young man, Joel Escobar, 18, also admitted his guilt and will be sentenced in February. Another alleged accomplice, Edwin Rios, 19, will be tried in April.

The body of the murdered young woman was found a month after her death, face down in a creek. The body was broken, but could be identified by a tattoo on his right hand .

After hearing his sentence, Fuentes Ponce said, in Spanish: "I have nothing to say."