The family of a 37-year-old rideshare driver kidnapped and murdered in Georgia in 2021 will finally have some closure after nine drug traffickers pleaded guilty in her case.
Rossana Delgado, a mother of two, was killed in April 2021 after she was kidnapped by several members of a drug trafficking organization.
Police say the Barrow County mother was “lured” to the Plaza Fiesta mall northeast of Atlanta under the guise of going on a shopping trip — but was then kidnapped by a group and taken to several locations over the next couple of days.
Delgado’s husband said his wife told him she was dropping off one last passenger and then coming home for the day. He became worried after Delgado didn’t return later that night. He then traced his wife’s last moves through her phone, finding a bloody face mask at one of the locations she had been, which led compelled him to call police.
Investigators were led to a rural cabin that was rented through an online app using a stolen identity. There, investigators found Delgado’s body four days after she was reported missing, 120 miles away from where she was last seen.
“At the cabin [the suspects] did torture Delgado prior to her death and eventually carried out the killing of Delgado and dismemberment and burning of Delgado’s body,” the Appalachian Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office said in a press release last week, announcing the latest details in the case.
Police first said they were searching for five suspects in connection to Delgado’s death. But in its press release, the district attorney’s office say nine people have pleaded guilty to crimes connected with the Georgia mother’s kidnapping and murder.
After Delgado’s murder, several of the suspects had fled to Mexico. A month after Delgado’s murder, the district attorney’s office says four of the suspects were apprehended in Mexico and extradited to the United States.
In all, a grand jury indicted 14 people on charges in connection to Delgado’s kidnapping and murder, while all nine suspects in custody pleaded guilty before the trial was set to begin this month. Two people, Oscar Manuel Garcia and Juan Ayala-Rodriguez, were sentenced to life in prison for the murder.
The office says police are still searching for three more suspects.
“It is my hope, even though this matter remains open, that the resolutions and sentences entered at this time will assist the family and loved ones of Rossana Delgado in beginning to obtain closure,” District Attorney B. Alison Sosebee said in a statement.
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