By Wendy Anders

Merrit Island, Florida resident, Sondra Lynn Payne Elizondo, was found dead in her hotel room in San José, Costa Rica last December.

Last week the prime suspect in the case, Alejandro Obando Vega, was ordered three more months in prison by the San José Criminal Court while the case continues to be investigated, reported the judicial branch press office Friday.

As previously reported by The Costa Rica Star, the body of Mrs. Elizondo was found by housekeeping staff at Hotel 69 in Barrio La California in eastern San José. A preliminary crime scene report suggested that Mrs. Elizondo was sexually assaulted before being stabbed at least 15 times, strangled with a bed sheet, and suffocated with a pillow.

The Wylie-Baxley Merritt Island Funeral Home published an obituary in December describing the 45-year-old victim as hailing from Minneapolis, MN. After graduating with a BA in Social Work from St. Thomas College in St. Paul, MN, Elizondo served as a Peace Corps in Costa Rica where she later met her husband, Ricardo Elizondo. They married in 1996 and moved to Merritt Island, FL in December 2013. Elizondo was awarded the St. Thomas Humanitarian Award in 2014 for her work founding Vida Volunteer, a nonprofit humanitarian organization.

Sondra is survived by her husband, two children, her parents, George and Kathy Erickson Payne, a brother, Gregg Payne, and maternal grandmother, Doris Wallin Erickson. She is also survived by a niece and three nephews, many cousins, many aunts and uncles, and tons of friends, stated the funeral home.

Memorial donations were requested to a college fund for the Elizondo’s children.

Glenn Blumhorst, president of the National Peace Corps Association wrote in the digital funeral home guest book on Saturday, December 19, 2015, “On behalf of the entire Peace Corps community, our most sincere condolences to the family of our colleague Sondra. Her life and work embodied the ideals of the Peace Corps and she will surely be long remembered for the many lives she positively impacted.”

Vida Volunteer, according to information on their website, engages volunteers in service-learning projects in Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica aimed at opening future health professionals’ minds while providing basic medical services to Central Americans.

Free or low-cost mobile general medicine, dental health, and veterinary medicine clinics are run at various community sites by volunteer students and professionals. Vida is a 501c3 charity registered in the state of Minnesota and donations to our program are tax-deductible in the U.S.

On a related note, also last week the judicial office reported that a man by the last name of Solano charged with femicide was sentenced to 41 1/2 years in jail for murdering a woman named Araya in June 2015 in Itiquís, Alajuela. The couple, which was romantically involved, had an argument in her home on the day she was shot. Araya died several days later from the injuries, stated the press report.