CARACAS, Venezuela — A former Miss Venezuela and her Irish ex-husband were shot and killed and their 5-year-old daughter was wounded when they resisted robbers by locking their car doors after it broke down, police said Tuesday.

The murders of popular soap-opera actress Monica Spear, 29, and Thomas Berry, 39, were the latest high-profile crime in a country where people are regularly killed in armed robberies and where rampant kidnapping has ensnared even foreign ambassadors and professional baseball players.

Spear and Berry were slain late Monday night near Puerto Cabello, the country’s main port, while headed to Caracas after their car hit “a sharp object that had been placed on the highway,” the director of the country’s investigative police, José Gregorio Sierralta, told reporters.

He said the attack occurred after the car had been lifted onto a tow truck and, seeing the assailants coming, the family locked themselves in their car.

Sierralta said the couple’s daughter was treated for a minor leg wound and was with relatives in Caracas. He said police in Puerto Cabello had arrested five suspects, some under age 18.

Local media reports said the pair had a good relationship despite being divorced, and identified Berry as the owner of a travel agency.

Venezuela has one of the world’s highest murder rates, and violent crime is so rampant that residents tend to stay home after dark.

Spear’s death triggered a wave of anger on social media directed at the populist government’s poor record on crime.

Spear was crowned Miss Venezuela in 2004 and had acted in numerous soap operas for Florida-based Telemundo. She split her time between Venezuela and the United States.