PONCE, Puerto Rico, May 13 (UPI) -- Puerto Rican police said they are investigating the shooting deaths of a Florida police officer and his sister, whose bodies were found in a remote area.
The officer, Juan Leonardo Aviles Otero, 34, of Miami-Dade County, the father of newborn twins, had gone to Puerto Rico to try to convince his mother to move to Miami, The Miami Herald reported Friday.
The bodies of the officer and his sister, 21-year-old Jazmin Plaza Otero, were found Thursday in a remote part of southern Puerto Rico, police said. Both had been shot multiple times in the face and body.
Lt. Angel Feliciano of the Ponce homicide unit said three envelopes with a white powdery substance were found in Aviles' pocket. A similar empty packet was on the floor of the car the victims were in.
"The contents [of the packet found on the floor] had already been consumed," Feliciano said.
Police said the officer and his sister had been having drinks at Las Copitas, a sports bar in Villalba, near a mountain called Cerro Maravilla, about 55 miles south of the capital.
Police were trying to determine if the two were ambushed or whether they were parked on the side of the road at the time they were shot.
"This [the killings] arose from a discussion they had had earlier at the place of business," Police Superintendent Jose Figueroa Sancha said, suggesting a bar fight might have occurred. "This goes to what we've been talking about the tolerance, or lack of tolerance, in these types of discussions, in these types of establishments."
