Two young American women killed in Costa Rica

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - Two 19-year-old American women were found shot to death near a Caribbean beach town in Costa Rica, security officials said yesterday.

The bodies were found Monday along a highway near the town of Cahuita, about 90 miles east of San Jose, the capital, said Jesus Urena, a spokesman for the Public Security Ministry.

Costa Rican officials identified the victims as Emily Howell of Lexington, Ky., and Emily Eagen of Ann Arbor, Mich.

The women were driving a sports-utility vehicle when the attack occurred, said police spokeswoman Margarita Morales. The rented vehicle was found burned Monday on a major highway just outside San Jose.

The officials said one of the women had been shot twice and the other three times.

Credit cards, clothing and other belongings were found near the bodies, Urena said.

Scott Warren, dean of students at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, said Howell was a student at the college who had been in the Central American nation since January on a photography project. Eagen was a former student who was visiting her and had been in the country 15 days.

He said authorities were uncertain about the motivation for the attack. "It appears to be a random, tragic incident."

Howell's roommate was also in Costa Rica but was elsewhere when the killings occurred, Warren said. She has since been reunited with her father.

Eagen's mother, Shirley Eagen, described her daughter's trip as her "fling" before re-entering college as an education major in the fall.

She said the family had researched Costa Rica and believed it was safe. "This could have happened anywhere," she said.

The area is part of Limon province, where five slayings have occurred so far this month. It includes a depressed banana industry and beaches popular with tourists.

Costa Rica - one of the world's leaders in eco-tourism - welcomed more than 1 million visitors last year, who brought more than $1 billion to the country.