MEXICO CITY (proceso. com.mx).- In Maldonado, Uruguay, 17-year-old Valentina Cancela went every Tuesday to take English classes. When she didn’t come home, her mother Liliana Sarmoria called her without getting an answer. Her ex-boyfriend Santino Gandini, also 17, had murdered her.
Valentina hadn’t told anyone that she would see Santino that day; He had been forbidden to see her since she filed three complaints against her for gender violence, but now they met in secret.
The teenager called her language teacher to let her know that she would not be taking the class. She met with Santino and they went to Playa Brava in Punta del Este.
According to the version of The countryThey sat on the sand, he behind her with his legs spread. Suddenly they began to argue and Santino, full of anger, grabbed her by the neck and suffocated her.
The lie
Valentina’s mother, desperate, called her daughter’s friends. She told them that she had not gone to her English class, so one of them, Isabel, suspected that she was with Santino and sent them both messages on WhatsApp.
Isabel wrote to Santino:
Are you with Vale?
–No, why? I’m at home –Santino answered.
The friend told her that Valentina did not answer and that they were looking for her.
“We don’t know where he is,” Isabel wrote.
-Isa, news? Santino replied.
“Nothing, we don’t know anything.
“Isa, let’s go find her.
I’m in Montevideo. I’m shaking. The mother already did it.
Santino told her that he thought he was the last person to see her, because they met at 1:00 p.m. on the beach, but later he no longer answered her messages. Isabel demanded to give her more context.
The confession
On Wednesday, August 16, Santino “N” confessed to his father about the femicide committed at Playa Brava in Punta del Este, in Uruguay.
At 3:30 p.m., he went to a police station and recounted how he suffocated the 17-year-old girl, now in front of both her parents and her lawyer.
The teenager testified before the prosecutor on Thursday and, in the afternoon, he arrived hooded and with a bulletproof vest to appear before a judge. Hours later, he revealed the place where he left Valentina’s body.
On August 16, police from the Department of Maldonado, in the southeast of Uruguay, found Valentina’s body.
The Maldonado police chief, Erode Ruiz, pointed out that Valentina’s body was buried in a well made by the femicide, also 17 years old, and who, at her young age, already had three complaints of gender violence, for so he could not get close to the victim.
The prosecutor in the case, Jorge Vas, the femicide collaborated with the authorities and at the scene they found Valentina’s backpack with her belongings and biological remains. Santino will be prosecuted as an adolescent offender and could go to jail since the maximum sentence is 10 years.
Victim of violence
Valentina’s mother, Liliana Sarmoria, told the Uruguayan newspaper The Observer that Santino was a violent teenager.
“They had started a relationship like all adolescent girls, with all their desire. A girl who came from a good home, with many values to trust the other.
“He is shown as a gallant person, not so much with words, but with details. Later, he spent time and that changed until it became a violent relationship, ”he said.
Before her daughter’s femicide, she spoke with Santino’s father and warned him that he would denounce his son, because their toxic relationship was not healthy for both of them.
Before their disappearance, the security cameras of the Ministry of the Interior captured them together. Santino is then seen going on and off the beach for approximately three hours, becoming the prime suspect.
