The planning began on July 14, 2026. According to the prosecution's account presented at preliminary hearings in Cali, three of the five suspects — Juliet Cecilia Angulo Escobar, Nidson Steven Mondragón Cuero, and Kevin Alexis López Orozco — met inside a vehicle in the Santa Elena neighborhood and agreed on a specific objective: lure María Camila Potosí, 22 years old and eight months pregnant, to a house; extract her baby by improvised cesarean; and then kill her. The agreed payment for the operation, according to the prosecution, was four million pesos.
Two days later, on July 16, 2026, the plan moved into execution.
The entry point was trust. According to the prosecution's reconstruction, Juliet Angulo and María Camila had met months earlier through the ICBF's FAMI program, a government initiative directed at expectant mothers. Angulo allegedly told the victim she was also pregnant and expecting a girl. That shared experience, the prosecution argued, became the mechanism of approach.
On July 16, 2026, Angulo convinced María Camila to ride with her on a TVS motorcycle to a residence in the Polvorines neighborhood, on a hillside in Cali. Once inside, Angulo kept her there by claiming she had lost the motorcycle keys — a delay tactic, according to the prosecution, designed to hold the victim in place until the others arrived.
Minutes later, Nidson Steven Mondragón Cuero and Edwin García Zuluaga entered the property. Between 3:30 in the afternoon and 10:00 at night, according to evidence presented by the prosecution, Mondragón subdued María Camila with a bladed weapon, leaving her defenseless. While she was still alive, the prosecution stated, the suspects performed what the fiscal called an 'artisanal cesarean' to extract the baby, who was born alive.
Afterward, María Camila was killed. The forensic finding presented in court: 22 stab wounds to her head, neck, thorax, and abdomen. The prosecution described the injuries as evidence of 'a particularly cruel manner of acting' and said the victim 'suffered deliberate pain.'
Following the hearings, the Ninth Municipal Criminal Court with Guarantee Control Functions in Cali ordered pretrial detention for all five suspects: Juliet Cecilia Angulo Escobar, Nidson Steven Mondragón Cuero, Kevin Alexis López Orozco, Juan José Narváez Rodríguez, and Edwin García Zuluaga. The prosecution now has 90 days to file a formal accusation. The baby's remains, according to a separate report by Medicina Legal cited in the source, were recovered and confirmed to belong to María Camila's daughter.
The charges presented include aggravated femicide — given the victim's status as a pregnant woman and the cruelty employed — aggravated simple kidnapping, enforced disappearance regarding the concealment of the newborn, and destruction of material evidence, related to what the prosecution described as a cleaning of the crime scene and vehicle to eliminate traces of blood.
Say it plainly: this case exposes something that no press release from any ministry will address directly. Colombia's institutions — courts, prosecutors, forensic units — performed their function here. Five suspects are behind bars; the charges are serious; the evidence, by the prosecution's account, is substantial. That is not nothing. But the crime itself points to a deeper failure of public order: a young woman was targeted precisely because she was vulnerable, pregnant, and trusting. The state program that brought her and her alleged killer together could not protect her. The question Colombia's government must answer is not only whether these five will be convicted — it is what conditions made this plan seem executable in the first place.
