Monica Spear was a popular soap opera actress.

A former Miss Venezuela and her ex-husband were shot and killed and their 5-year-old daughter wounded when they resisted robbers by locking themselves inside their car after tire punctures disabled it on an isolated stretch of highway, police said Tuesday.

The slaying of Monica Spear, 29, a popular soap-opera actress, and Thomas Henry Berry, a 39-year-old British citizen, was the latest high-profile crime in a country where killings are common in armed robberies and where rampant kidnapping has ensnared even foreign ambassadors and professional baseball players.

Monday's killings followed a pattern in Venezuela of late-night assaults carried out by disabling cars with obstacles placed on roadways or by removing sewer covers.

Locked themselves in car

Spear and Berry were slain at about 10:30 p.m. between Puerto Cabello, the country's main port, and the provincial capital of Valencia. They were returning from vacation to Caracas on a badly maintained stretch of highway that is lightly travelled at that hour.

Their four-door sedan hit 'a sharp object that had been placed on the highway' which punctured at least two of its tires, the director of the country's investigative police, Jose Gregorio Sierralta, told reporters.

Two tow trucks arrived almost immediately after, said Sierralta, and the attack occurr.