Boxer Félix Verdejo guilty in kidnapping death pregnant woman Keishla Rodríguez

The family of Keishla Rodríguez, 27, reported her missing after she did not show up to work. Two days later, authorities recovered her body in a lagoon in San Juan.

A jury of three women and nine men took part in the 30-year-old boxer’s nearly one-month trial held at the U.S. District Court of Puerto Rico. Verdejo was also found guilty of the death of an unborn child. The jury, which deliberated for three days, could not reach a unanimous verdict for a charge of carjacking that resulted in the death of a person and another charge of possession of a weapon during a violent crime.

Gabriela Cintrón, one of Verdejo’s lawyers, declined to comment when reached by The Washington Post on Friday evening. Verdejo’s sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 3, according to court filings. He faced a maximum sentence of life in prison for the four felonies he was originally charged with.

The Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevo Día reported from inside the courtroom that Verdejo remained expressionless as the jury’s verdict was read, while Rodríguez’s family hugged and cried.

“May he live the rest of his life thinking about what he did to my daughter,” Rodríguez’s father, Tony Rodríguez, told Telemundo Puerto Rico outside the courthouse.

The defense presented nine witnesses including some of Verdejo’s former partners, his ex-coach and sister, who described him as a nonviolent and “excellent” person, Telemundo Puerto Rico reported.

Verdejo, who had denied wrongdoing, was arrested by the FBI and charged on May 2, 2021. Authorities said the boxer punched Rodríguez, who was nearly two months pregnant, drugged her and then threw her off a bridge. An autopsy revealed Rodríguez died of drowning after being injected with fentanyl and xylazine, a drug used to sedate animals, a forensic pathologist testified in court.

Rodríguez’s case sparked protests in Puerto Rico and an avalanche of social media posts denouncing violence against women, which remained so rampant on the island that in January 2021, Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi (D) declared a state of emergency over the issue. In 2021, 53 women and girls were killed because of their gender, according to the Observatory of Gender Equality of Puerto Rico. The year prior, the organization recorded 60 such deaths.

Verdejo, who shared a house with another woman, had kept in touch with Rodríguez since they met in middle school, her parents told El Nuevo Día. She worked at a pet grooming business and owned two cats and two dogs, according to her mother, Keila Ortiz Rivera. She loved animals and whenever she was not at work, she…