Fashion designer Carolina Herrera has dressed first ladies from Jackie O to Melania Trump.
On Saturday, she dressed down Venezuela’s “communist dictatorship” over the kidnapping and “assassination” of her nephew and his business partner in the violence-torn country last week.
The bodies of Reinaldo Jose Herrera, 34, and Fabrizio Mendoza, 31, were found Thursday night in a vehicle abandoned outside the capital, Caracas. According to reports, a ransom had been demanded and paid.
“Our only hope is that the tragic assassination of our young nephew, Reinaldo, and his colleague, Fabrizio, will serve to mitigate the terrible carnage and murders that are committed against our youth in Venezuela,” the fashion icon wrote in an Instagram message posted on Saturday.
Herrera, 78, who keeps an address on the Upper East Side, was born and raised in Venezuela.
“The Electoral Results must be respected,” she wrote in the post, which included a photo of herself next to one of her nephew.
“The Communist Dictatorship must go,” she concluded.
In the wake of violent anti-government protests, Venezuela’s Socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, has suspended the country’s constitution, declared a state of emergency and delayed elections.
The nephew, who was a father of two, and his construction-business partner were eating lunch at a restaurant in eastern Caracas when they were reportedly abducted by a gang of thugs.
Mendoza was taken to his home and forced to turn over all of his cash and valuables, according to reports.
The two men were reportedly found bound with point-blank gunshot wounds in their heads.
Their bodies were abandoned in a white Toyota truck on a highway that stretches between Caracas and the Caribbean coast.
State prosecutors have called the attack a kidnapping, an all-too-common crime in Venezuela, which suffers from triple-digit inflation and chronic food shortages.
Reports in Venezuelan papers suggested that Mendoza was being investigated for an import/resale racket and that he may have been the target of kidnappers.
Venezuela has one of the highest murder rates in the world. In 2016, it recorded the highest murder rate in its history, with 70 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
In 2013, the country was referred to as the kidnapping capital of the world, with an average of five people abducted and held for ransom every day.
Reinaldo was related to the fashion designer by marriage. According to Venezuelan media, his father is Luis Felipe Herrera Guevara. Carolina is married to Guevara’s brother, Reinaldo Herrera, a wealthy Venezuelan businessman and real-estate mogul.
“Carolina and Reinaldo Herrera, and their family are deeply devastated by this tragedy,” a spokewoman for the designer said Saturday. “They are not available for further comment. The family requests privacy as they grieve.”
Herrera is scheduled to receive the 2017 Designer of Excellence award in Chicago Monday, TMZ has reported. There was no word whether she would cancel.