For weeks, 16-year-old Natalie Partida had a target on her back.
The teen and two of her girlfriends were allegedly marked for abduction, torture and possibly rape – part of a gang-related scheme to get them to disclose who might have shot up two apartment buildings in Colorado Springs.
Whether the Coronado High School sophomore had a role in a feud between the South Side Soldados and a rival gang called the Meadows isn’t clear, but according to Angelita Prado, it’s what motivated Partida’s March 11 kidnapping and murder.
Partida’s body was found a day after her abduction on a dirt road south of Fountain. The body of Derek Greer, her 15-year-old classmate, lay beside her. Both were shot repeatedly, including in the head, while near the Pikes Peak International Raceway, authorities say.
Greer was killed because he was a witness to his friend’s slaying, Prado told investigators. She is one of 10 people who face charges for their roles in the teens’ deaths.
El Paso County investigators previously said in arrest documents that at a party. Prado, however, supplied a fuller account of the motive behind the killings in August after taking a plea bargain, said El Paso County Sheriff’s Detective Rosario Hubbell, who took the stand Tuesday and described Prado’s confession.
The new claims of gang links emerged Tuesday during the first day of a preliminary hearing for three of the . The other five are charged with playing a role in the crime. The hearing is expected to last the rest of the week.
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