NewsLatin AmericaFour police officers found guilty of the death of four innocent people who were followed and shot

Four police officers found guilty of the death of four innocent people who were followed and shot

A popular jury in Argentina found four police officers guilty this Wednesday for the death of three adolescents between the ages of 13 and 14 and a 22-year-old adult in what is known as the Monte Massacre. On the night of May 20, 2019, the victims were driving and listening to music in San Miguel del Monte, a town in the province of Buenos Aires, when they began to be chased by two police vehicles that tried to stop them with shots. The driver, the only adult in the group, accelerated to flee, lost control of the car and crashed into a parked truck. The driver and three of the occupants of the car died on the spot. Only a 13-year-old teenager survived, Rocio Quagliarello, a high school classmate of the deceased and a key witness in the trial.

The 12 members of the jury found guilty of “aggravated homicide due to abuse of their function as a member of the police forces, qualified by the use of firearms” and of “violation of the duties of a public official” to the officers Leonardo Daniel Ecilape and former captain Ruben Alberto Garcia. Manuel Monreal and Mariano Alejandro Ibanez were found guilty of attempted aggravated homicide for the use of his police function and for the use of a firearm.” After the guilty verdict, the Oral Criminal Court 4 of La Plata will establish the penalties, which will be announced in the coming days.

“They were innocent boys, good people, they had no reason to be in a dangerous circumstance. They went for a walk, the same as all the people of Monte do,” prosecutor Mariano Sibuet told the jury. “They began to persecute them without there being a reason or suspicion that warrants it,” he said during his argument before requesting that they be sentenced so that “these events never happen again.”

One of the harshest stories heard during the trial was that of the survivor, now 17 years old. Quagliarello recounted that “out of nowhere” they began to chase them and shoot and suddenly one of his friends grabbed his knee and yelled “it burns me, it burns me”. It was Gonzalo Dominguez, who was shot in the thigh minutes before dying from the serious collision of the vehicle, which was destroyed.

In their last words before hearing the verdict, the defendants apologized for the pain caused to the families of the victims and maintained that they are not murderers but that they acted in the line of duty.

Four years ago, the deaths of Dominguez (14), Camila Lopez (13 years old), Danilo Sansone (13) and Anibal Suarez (22) sparked the outrage of the residents of San Miguel del Monte, a town of less than 15,000 inhabitants. The scandal grew when the policemen’s crude attempt to pass off what had happened as an inevitable tragedy was made public. In their first version, they were described as suspects who resisted arrest and were not shot at. Forensics, however, found the bullet in Dominguez’s thigh, and at least three bullet holes in the few unbroken pieces of the car that remained after the crash.

The supposed “criminals” turned out to be young people known to all and with no criminal record who had tried to flee from the shots, terrified. During the trial, security camera footage was also shown that contradicted the police version.

The Monte Massacre once again put the Police of the province of Buenos Aires, one of the forces with the worst image in the country, in the eye of the storm. The police leadership was beheaded and an investigation was opened.

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