The State of Mexico Prosecutor’s Office has reported this Saturday that it is dropping the accusation against Roxana Ruiz, the woman who two years ago killed the man who raped her in self-defense. One of the most publicized cases in recent months, Ruiz, who had been sentenced a few days ago to six years and two months in prison, for excessive self-defense, sees how her complaints are beginning to take effect. The six-year sentence was not firm and, given the possible appeals of Ruiz and her lawyers, the Prosecutor’s Office has decided to withdraw from it.
“After learning of the sentence of May 15 against Roxana Ruiz,” the Prosecutor’s Office wrote in a statement, “the attorney general instructed the Central Prosecutor’s Office for Attention to Crimes Linked to Gender Violence to bring the case, for its subsequent analysis, under the methodological parameters that must be taken into account when subjects from vulnerable groups are involved”, he added. In the review, the gender violence unit concluded that Ruiz “is exempt from criminal responsibility, since this Prosecutor’s Office considers that she acted in legitimate defense.”
The news marks a victory for Ruiz, 23, originally from Oaxaca. But also for a country like Mexico, which counts thousands of murders of women each year. Ruiz has alluded precisely to what the figures hide. The violence that is exercised against women, as a context of what happened in her case. In an interview with EL PAÍS this week, she pointed out that “it was my life or his.”
The woman told this newspaper what happened. It was the year 2021. Ruiz had gone out on the street with his cart to sell French fries. Some women who worked across from her invited her to have a few beers. “I took one and left,” she has recounted on several occasions. At that moment, a boy she knew by sight of her, Sinai Cruz, approached her and offered to walk her to her house. “He insisted that she let him in and stay the night because she lived far away,” explains Ruiz. She says that, out of fear, she agreed to allow him to enter. When she was asleep, she adds, the man raped her. “I woke up and this guy was on top of me with his pants and boxers down. And I, well, the only thing I did was get rid of it, defend myself and get out alive, ”she says.
Ruiz recounts that they both struggled and that during the fight, Cruz hit his head and died. Frightened, the woman tried to remove the man’s body from her house, but then the police stopped her. Ruiz spent nine months in pretrial detention until he was released on provisional release. “I explained to them that I defended myself when that person was abusing me, but they did not take it into account in my statement,” said the woman in an interview.
Asked about the case, a spokesman for the State of Mexico Prosecutor’s Office explained that the ball is now in the court of the local judiciary. “The Prosecutor’s Office is no longer the accusing party. What is expected now is that this week there will be a hearing, in which the judge will hear about the withdrawal and close the case. Although the latter depends on the judiciary. With this, the Prosecutor’s Office recognizes that it was personal defense ”, he explains.
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