Instagram Model Helps Mom Escape Prison By Showing Up To Her Dentist Appointment
She even got her little brother involved
Instagram / YouTube A Colombian Instagram model named Aída Victoria Merlano, 21, helped her mother escape from prison a couple of days ago while she was being accompanied by guards to a dentist’s office visit.
The action movie-like plan was executed using a rope and a getaway bike that required her mother, Aída Merlano Rebolledo, to climb out of the third-story window into the street in broad daylight.
Aída Victoria Merlano could face prison for helping her mother escape from the Bogota prison.
The 40-year-old woman was a former senator in Colombia, winning the election in 2019 before she was immediately investigated by the authorities for campaign irregularities.
They discovered evidence of voter fraud, corruption, and illegal possession of weapons — convicting her of her crimes just 6 months after his political win.
She was sentenced to 15 years in prison but escaped custody two weeks later with the help of her daughter, which was unknown at the time.
Merlano needed to visit the dentist’s office outside of the prison for an appointment and was accompanied by a driver and a guard who let her into the examination room alone, waiting in the waiting area.
According to trial evidence, the dentist left her alone in the room for long enough to allow her to descend from the window using the rope and climb onto the back of the getaway vehicle.
Onlookers were stunned and confused. They asked her if she was OK while she continued on her way, not wanting to stay long enough to get caught.
She then escaped to Venezuela, which neighbors Colombia, and was later caught in January 2020.
Police immediately looked to the dentist, Javier Cely Barajas, and Victoria as accomplices and charged both of them with aiding in her escape.
According to the prosecutor, when Merlano left prison the day of the escape she didn’t have the tools she needed to break out of the dentist’s office.
They allege that Victoria went to the dentist’s office that day and gave her the tools she needed to “facilitate” the escape, and even supplied her mother with a cell phone.
Victoria also implicated her underaged brother in the crime as well — since she went to the dentist’s office with him and authorities suspect that the rope came from a black backpack he was wearing that hadn’t been searched.
The family made a scene at the dentist’s office until Victoria and her brother were allowed to go into the examination room to see their mother.
When the guard was put on the stand to testify, she said that she began to feel amiss and that something was wrong because the door was closed, but by the time she went in, it was too late.
“I went to the door and opened it and Merlano Rebolledo was no longer in the office and the red rope was hanging from the window," she reportedly testified.
Victoria has been open about the trial to her 2.5 million followers on Instagram, although she can’t reveal any specifics.
“Despite getting up every day knowing that I can go to jail for 21 years, I am happy because I have the conviction that happiness is a decision that one makes every day,” she said in a video on Instagram. “Be happy today because you do not know what will happen tomorrow.”
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.