QCOSTARICA — The growing wave of violence that Costa Rica is experiencing spares no one, not even children and adolescents. A total of eight minors are already collateral victims of homicide so far this year.
These are eight children and adolescents who lost their lives after one or more “stray” bullets hit their bodies, mostly out of revenge or settling scores.
According to data from theOrganismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) – Judicial Investigation Agency, for the year 2024, the majority of these crimes (three) were recorded in the province of San José, with the most affected age group being adolescents between 15 and 16 years of age.
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In total, in the last five years, 23 minors have become collateral victims of these homicides: 4 in 2020, none in 2021, 3 in 2022, and 8 in 2023.
“There are fewer homicides in general – at the country level this year -, but the number of homicides of minors due to collateral damage has remained the same. This means that collateral damage has increased. If there are fewer homicides in total, I should have fewer minors wounded by gunshots, but it is the opposite,” said Bryan Sandí, former police instructor and criminologist.
According to OIJ statistics, Costa Rica ended the year 2023 with 907 homicides, the largest number in the country’s history. As of November 18 of this year, there were a total of 773.
There is more and more violence
The increase in collateral damage is seen by experts consulted as a sign of the growth of the wave of violence that is ravaging the country.
“This coincides with the increase in violence between criminal groups in conflict, and the move from the private to the public. The confrontation used to take place at home, in a private place, now it doesn’t. Now criminals shoot each other in a shopping center, on the beach, in a dance hall, in a bar,” he said.
In the last three years, according to Sandí, homicides have skyrocketed in highly crowded places. This increases collateral damage, since minors do not know how to react in a shootout.
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He also stressed that the perpetrators commit these attacks when the person they are going to kill is with their family or children, since at that moment they are more vulnerable. This is also a demonstration of power to tell people that, “even if they are in a public place with their family, they don’t care.”
The president of the Institute of Victimology and member of the Security and Drug Trafficking Commission of the Bar Association, Angie Arce, agrees with this. She stressed that as the months go by, the homicides are increasingly atrocious and are made to scare, as they even happen near schools.
“The hitmen don’t care and rather they do it that way to instill fear in the population. (…) You can no longer sit in a restaurant because anyone is in danger. You have to be careful. There is fear in the population. The neighborhoods are more unsafe and there are no police available,” added Arce.
In marginal urban neighborhoods, even minors are not even safe inside their homes. Samuel Arroyo, eight years old, died in 2023, when he was hit by a stray bullet while sleeping in his bed.
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“In the marginal urban neighborhoods where these confrontations take place in the street, the child is not even safe inside the home. These homes are of humble origin, with wooden or tin walls, and bullets go through walls without any problem. Even lying in bed, the child is not safe because a burst of machine gun fire goes through walls and hits the people inside the home,” Sandí said.
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