Quintana Roo Judge Postpones Hearing Against Police Officer Accused of Botching Femicide Probe

Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo — A judge in Quintana Roo has postponed until December an intermediate hearing against an investigative police officer suspended over alleged irregularities and delays in the femicide case of Vianca Moreno Labastida, who was beaten to death in Playa del Carmen in 2018.

The hearing had been scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 27 — more than a year after the officer was bound over to trial — but a defense appeal forced a judge to reschedule it, said Vianca Labastida Contreras, the victim’s mother.

“Do you know how long it took for this hearing to happen? A year, and it’s an intermediate hearing,” she said. “The good thing is that the defense was ordered to go ahead with it whether or not there is evidence, because too much time has passed.”

The suspended officer served in the State Prosecutor’s Office for Quintana Roo (FGEQROO), which placed him on leave after the complaint accusing him of mishandling the investigation into the murder of Moreno Labastida, 31.

Crime Scene Allegedly Altered

Moreno Labastida was attacked and beaten on Feb. 21, 2018, at a home in Playa del Carmen. According to the complaint, the then-investigative officer allowed the crime scene to be improperly manipulated — with his own wife taking part as a forensic expert assigned by the same agency.

In 2023, the Quintana Roo State Human Rights Commission (CDHEQROO) issued a recommendation against the state prosecutor’s office, which led to a public apology to Labastida Contreras. The commission found that authorities violated her daughter’s right of access to justice by conducting the investigation without a gender perspective during the tenure of then-State Prosecutor Miguel Ángel Pech.

Labastida Contreras says she is the first mother of a femicide victim in Quintana Roo to secure a court order binding a prosecutor’s office official over to trial, noting that other victims’ relatives give up on their cases.

Alleged Perpetrator Due in Court in November

A separate intermediate hearing is scheduled for Nov. 18 in the case against Addy Candelaria, who was bound over to trial in September of last year as the alleged perpetrator of the femicide. A preschool teacher and school director in Playa del Carmen, she was Moreno Labastida’s roommate.

Friends, relatives and members of the teachers’ union have campaigned on her behalf through a social media page called “Justice for Addy,” insisting she is innocent and accusing the prosecutor’s office of planting evidence.

Labastida Contreras remains convinced that Candelaria carried out the killing.

“They are going to try to take away all my evidence; her defense, a former corrupt prosecutor, has tried to do everything possible to lift the precautionary measures — the deprivation of liberty — and fortunately the judge did not grant it, and now we go to the intermediate hearing,” she said.

She also said she has faced harassment from supporters of the accused and has been insulted on social media by people who have not seen the case file. She said her daughter’s ex-boyfriend, who lives in Spain, has been targeted as well, and that a girlfriend he had at the time ended the relationship because of the attacks and accusations.