Authorities are investigating a possible connection between Candela Santa María and her killer, Rodrigo López.

The investigation into the homicide of Candela Santa María, which occurred in La Matanza, appears to have taken an unexpected turn after the Buenos Aires police began working with the hypothesis, based on evidence and witness statements, that the 24-year-old driver knew her killer, Rodrigo López.

According to investigators, that connection could be related to alleged illicit activities, specifically the illegal sale of firearms and ammunition.

According to sources close to the case, the police took a statement from a young man who admitted to having bought two boxes of 9-millimeter bullets last week for 140,000 pesos (308 pounds).

According to his account, he made the payment through a virtual wallet, to an account in the name of Santa María's mother. The witness stated that Candela was engaged in that illegal business and that he had reached her through “Piñón,” the alias by which López, the perpetrator of the crime, was known, who shot himself when the police tried to arrest him.

Other testimonies also indicated that, in the Primavera II neighborhood of González Catán, it was an open secret that drugs were sold at “Piñón” López's house. The murder took place just a few meters (a few feet) from that property.

Meanwhile, a brother of the victim told the press that Candela worked intensely as a driver to pay for the Fiat Cronos she had bought four months earlier to perform that job. According to his account, the last time they heard from her, she had gone out to park the vehicle. She was later found lifeless inside the car, with a gunshot wound to the temple and without her cell phone, which initially led to the belief that it was a homicide during a robbery.

However, both Uber and DiDi, the platforms the young woman worked with, confirmed that there was no trip registered at that address that she had accepted. In addition, investigators determined that the victim's cell phone was at her home, about 15 blocks from the crime scene.

Inside the Fiat Cronos where Rosa Candela Santa María was found murdered, investigators found an empty box corresponding to a Taurus PT809E pistol, with serial number TIR-311531.

The investigation established that Rodrigo López, alias “Piñón,” was offering that pistol for sale through Instagram. This information, together with the testimony of a buyer who admitted to having bought ammunition on the black market, reinforces for the police the hypothesis that the victim and her killer maintained some kind of partnership in the clandestine sale of firearms and bullets.

“Piñón's” suicide

After the crime, and thanks to eyewitness accounts, agents of the Tactical Operations Group of the Buenos Aires police based in La Matanza began the search for “Piñón,” under the orders of prosecutor Diego Rulli. In an initial emergency operation at his home, located at Coronel Ramos and La Bastilla streets, they were unable to find him: he had fled.

The trail led the officers to the house of some relatives in Virrey del Pino. They located him there. When he felt cornered, López tried to escape through the back of the property, but when he saw that the police had caught up with him, he shot himself in the right temple, dying instantly.

According to the investigation, he used the same Taurus 9-millimeter pistol he had tried to sell on social media and whose box was found in Candela's vehicle, next to the young woman's body.

Prosecutor Rulli, in charge of the Specialized Homicide Investigation Unit, ordered that the forensic examinations at the scene be carried out by experts from the Argentine Federal Police.