Moroni Killed in Nicaragua

[In today’s Washington Post]

Among those killed in the demonstrations was Moroni Lopez, a 22-year-old English student and former Mormon missionary. He had joined the protests after watching footage of police roughing up protesters.

“He saw this video on the news and he said, ‘Look what they are doing to the elderly,’?” his mother, Alba Garcia Vargas, recalled. “He was so enraged that he went to help.”
Lopez lived in Ciudad Sandino, an area on the outskirts of Managua renamed after the Sandinista revolutionaries came to power.

“Let’s get going,” Lopez texted his neighbor and friend, Erick Espinoza, on Thursday, urging him to join the protest.

“Loco,” replied Espinoza, 20, “we’re a minority here” — reflecting his worries that the Sandinista Youth would crack down.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lopez wrote. “More will join us.”

In cellphone videos taken of a large protest on Friday, Lopez can be seen walking with a large crowd in Managua chanting “Daniel! Somoza! You are the same thing.”

After the protest march came under fire from police, Lopez joined protesters in a human chain that passed bricks to a group of students who had barricaded themselves near the National Engineering University. At some point in the melee, a bullet struck him and pierced his lung, according to his death certificate. His mother learned of his death when a woman who had been standing next to Lopez called her, using his cellphone.

“He wanted to help out as a volunteer,” said his father, Jose Gabriel Lopez. “The police surrounded them.”