Family, Friends Mourn Tragic Deaths

By Lisa E. Crowley
BrocktonPost
BROCKTON—When Maria Montrond first met her best friend Maria Avelina Palaguachi-Cela three years ago at a local food pantry where the two women volunteered, they formed an instant friendship.
“My name is Maria and her name is Maria. My mother’s name is Avelina, her name is Avelina. We became great friends right away,” Montrond said.
Earlier today during the funeral for 25-year-old Palaguachi-Cela and her 2-year-old son Brian who were found brutally murdered 10 days ago in a dumpster behind their Warren Avenue apartment, Montrond could not hold back her tears.
She cried unabashedly as the caskets were carried out of St. Patrick Church into three hearses waiting outside to bring the three family members to their final resting place in their home country of Ecuador.
“She was so sweet, so nice,” Montrond said. “It’s so awful,” she said.
Not only have friends and family cried during the last nearly two weeks for the senseless killings of Palaguachi-Cela and her son Brian, but the family was struck with more sorrow after 25-year-old Luis Tenezaca Palaguachi, Maria Palaguachi-Cela’s nephew, died from a fall from a roof in New Bedford four days after his aunt and cousin were found.
Ines Montero, Montrond’s sister-in-law and one of more than 150 people who attended the service, shook her head and could only express her anguish about the family’s tragedy with a few words.
“It’s so sad. So awful,” Ines Montrond said. “Why the child? Why Brian? He was a nice little boy,” she said.
The question of why a young mother and her son were beaten to death is difficult to answer, said St. Patrick’s Pastor Rev. Jose Manuel Abalon who during a funeral mass mostly in Spanish pointed toward the Bible’s Book of Wisdom for solace.
“The measurement of life is not age,” Abalon said. “Maybe sometimes it is to take them from the situation we are in…and they are now in peace. In Christ we have the hope we haven’t lost Maria, Brian and Luis,” he said.
(Photo at top: At right, Maria Emilia Palaguachi and her husband Manuel Tenezaca await a limousine following the funerals for their son Luis, and Maria's sister Maria Avelina and nephew Brian)