Geraldín Moreno
Geraldín Moreno Orozco was 23 and studying cytotechnology at Universidad Arturo Michelena. Amnesty International identified her as a student from Valencia and documented her death in its reporting on the human-rights risks surrounding Venezuela's 2014 demonstrations.
Sources vary in rendering her first name. Amnesty and family-linked memorial material use Geraldín; Venezuelan prosecutorial and judicial notices frequently use Geraldine. This file treats those spellings as references to the same person and retains Geraldín in the title.
February 19 in Tazajal
On February 19, 2014, residents were demonstrating in the Tazajal sector of Naguanagua municipality when a commission of the Bolivarian National Guard arrived. Amnesty reported that Moreno was hit in the eye by a pellet during the protest. The prosecution's account says she received multiple pellet impacts to the face and was taken to a medical center.
Later reporting based on the Supreme Tribunal's decision states that Bonilla Rojas fired at close range and struck Moreno in the face. This page avoids graphic repetition: the essential documented fact is that the use of the weapon caused injuries from which she died on February 22.
Investigation and arrests
The Public Ministry stated that the two National Guard sergeants were arrested within days after investigators attributed responsibility to them. Prosecutors charged Bonilla Rojas as an author of aggravated homicide committed with treachery and futile motives, alongside cruel treatment, misuse of an issued weapon and breach of international principles.
Caridad Barroso was prosecuted as a non-necessary accomplice to the aggravated homicide and for related offenses. The distinction matters: the court did not assign the two men identical legal roles, and this dossier does not collapse accomplice liability into direct authorship.
The 2016 convictions
On December 14, 2016, the First Trial Court of Carabobo convicted both men. Bonilla Rojas received 30 years in prison, while Caridad Barroso received 16 years and six months. The Public Ministry reported that both were held at the Ramo Verde military detention center after sentencing.
A naming discrepancy also appears in the published record. The 2016 prosecutorial notice reproduced by PROVEA renders Bonilla's first name as Albin. The Supreme Tribunal's 2019 notice and decision identify him as Alvin David Bonilla Rojas. The latter full judicial name is used here without pretending the earlier spelling does not exist.
Appeals and final review
The Second Chamber of the Carabobo Court of Appeals rejected the defendants' appeals on January 16, 2018. Their defenses then filed cassation appeals before the Criminal Cassation Chamber of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice.
In judgment No. 175-2019, reported on August 16, 2019, the Supreme Tribunal dismissed those cassation claims as manifestly unfounded. The decision left the 30-year and 16-year-six-month sentences in place. This is why the case is classified as Solved / Adjudicated, rather than merely charged or pending.
What the convictions did not decide
The convictions answer who bore criminal responsibility in the two roles adjudicated by the courts. They do not establish that only two officers were involved in the operation, nor do they decide whether superiors carried criminal responsibility.
In 2024, Moreno's mother, Rosa Orozco, told Runrun.es that she continued to seek investigation of other officers and the chain of command. That is her documented position, not a judicial finding against unnamed people. The archive therefore records the remaining accountability gap while preserving the final convictions already entered.
A family's continuing work
Orozco later became a human-rights advocate and helped build Justicia, Encuentro y Perdón, an organization that documents victims of repression. Geraldín's case is remembered within that broader work, but her identity is not reduced to a political symbol: she was a young student whose killing required an individual criminal investigation.
The legal record shows an unusual combination for a protest-related killing: final convictions of identified state agents and an unresolved demand for examination of wider responsibility. Both parts belong in an accurate account.
Sources
- Supreme Tribunal of Justice of Venezuela — Criminal Cassation judgment No. 175-2019
- Supreme Tribunal of Justice of Venezuela — notice confirming the homicide convictions, August 16, 2019
- PROVEA reproduction of the Public Ministry notice — trial convictions, December 14, 2016
- Amnesty International — Geraldín Moreno case briefing, April 30, 2014
- Runrun.es — ten-year review and remaining command-accountability questions, February 22, 2024