An 11-year-old girl has died after thieves on a motorbike stole her belongings as she walked to school in the southern Buenos Aires suburb of Lanús. Two people have been arrested for the attack and gubernatorial candidates across the board have suspended their closing rallies ahead of this Sunday’s elections.

Morena Domínguez, 11, was approaching the gates of her school in the Villa Diamante neighborhood when thieves passing on a motorcycle hit her and grabbed her backpack shortly before 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday. She fell to the ground and hit her head during the attack, police said. The crime was caught by security cameras. 

Passers-by and paramedics attempted to revive her, and she was transported to the nearby Evita Hospital. Domínguez died of cardiopulmonary arrest 20 minutes after she was admitted, the authorities confirmed.

“She was like my sister,” her friend Priscila told the press through tears at the school gate. “She was nice, funny, she always played with me. I can’t take the pain. The ambulance took ages. They took her, and at like 11 in the morning they told us that she’d lost her life.”

On Wednesday afternoon Buenos Aires Security Minister Sergio Berni told press that two young men have been detained.

“It’s a lamentable, sad, moving event. We already have two young people arrested and have confiscated the motorcycle, including the two helmets used in the crime,” he told the C5N television channel. “We have just finished the procedures and for the prosecutor, with whom I just spoke, the case is closed.”

The minister indicated that the arrested youths are not 14-year-olds, as had been declared minutes earlier by police and municipal, but two suspects “of age” with criminal histories.

“We were searching for one who was fugitive, we arrested him, I talked to the prosecutor and got authorization to talk,” Berni said. “At one point we thought a minor had been involved but that wasn’t the case.”

Domínguez’s family is planning a vigil in the square outside the school later on Wednesday to call for justice for Morena and better security in the area.

“More was my son’s playmate,” said the mother of a pupil at the school. “Today, he watched as they performed CPR on her, that’s extremely painful […] It could be your own child.”

–With information from Télam