Venezuela Takes on Honduras for World’s Most Violent Nation

Carl Herrera, the first Venezuelan basketball player to make the US NBA league and current coach of local team Gigantes de Guayana, became another high-profile victim. On Saturday, December 20, Herrera was entering the crowded El Aguarestaurant, on Margarita Island, when thieves shot him twice.

No one escapes Venezuela’s increasing wave of violence. Civilians, sportsmen, models and even high-ranking politicians have all been victims of murders and armed robberies, according to the latest data from theVenezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV).

The local NGO reported on December 29 that 24,890 people were killed across the country in 2014. The figure, equivalent to 82 violent deaths per 100,000 people, makes Venezuela the second most violent country in the world after Honduras, on an estimated 104 per 100,000 people.

December saw 523 corpses admitted to Caracas’s public morgue — the capital’s most violent month in 2014. Forty-eight-year-old Celina García became the last reported victim of violence just 30 minutes before the New Year, in the upscale neighborhood of Sabana Grande, when a stray bullet hit her in the back.




http://panampost.com/sabrina-martin/2015/01/05/venezuela-takes-on-honduras-for-worlds-most-violent-nation/