MEXICO CITY, MEXICO – Former Amazon Mexico CEO Juan Carlos Garca was charged in court on June 6 with paying $9,000 to two hitmen to kill his ex-wife, Abril Pérez Sagaón, in November 2019. While travelling through Mexico City, she was shot in the head and neck by a man on a motorcycle who opened fire through the passenger-side window of a car in which she was sat.
The accused, who became the CEO of Amazon in Mexico in 2015 when the company launched its first office there, has also been accused of promising another $2,500 if the hitmen killed her before her next court hearing in a complaint she filed against him. Garca was suspected of attempting to murder his wife while they were still married, and he fled to the United States before the trial for her case began. Garca was subject to a restriction order by his wife, who had relocated from Mexico City to the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León.
Pérez travelled from Nuevo Leon to a private hospital in Mexico City after a judge ordered a psychological assessment as part of the inquiry into her charges against Garca. According to Pérez’s evidence in court, she was asleep at their shared residence in January 2019 when she was woken up by a blow to the head, as reported by El Pais. She claimed she saw Garca standing in front of her, with a baseball bat. She then testified that she was stabbed in the cheek with a sharp object and that Garca attempted to strangle her before their kid pushed Garca away and Pérez was able to flee through a window. Garca was temporarily detained before being released after a court determined that there was insufficient evidence to prove he intended to murder her. The accusations were classed as familial violence by the judge.
On November 25, 2019, a man on a motorbike approached the car she was riding in with her attorney and two minor sons as they stopped at a stoplight on their way back to the airport, and shot her in the head at close range.
No one else in the vehicle was hurt. The wife, on the other hand, died. Following her assassination, Garca wrote a letter to Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, claiming his innocence. “As a father, I would never want something like this to happen to my children, which has harmed them and changed our life,” the accused wrote.
