“I want justice for my son, that they pay for what they did, they had no mercy at all, I just want justice,” the mother of the young law student concluded in her presentation. Meanwhile, at the end of the hearing, the woman told the press that she was “indifferent” to the apology made by the eight defendants in her last words. “None of them looked me in the face. I’m not moved that they cry,” Graciela said as she left the Dolores courts.
“What they did to my son hurts in my soul. The life I have is no longer life. I miss him a lot,” she said excitedly and remarked: “Here, the only victim is Fernando.”
Next to her was Silvino, the victim’s father, who said that the rugby players’ apology seemed “acted”: “I don’t believe them.
It is very strong that they kill your son and then come to ask for forgiveness. I don’t see sincerity in them,” he said. The man considered that with this position, the defendants “wanted to change their situation” before the court but he was confident: “We are strong and with the evidence on the table.”
He also spoke in front of the Court.
“The truth is that I never thought I would be in this place. I always thought that one day my son would graduate and see how he would defend people, but never that I would be witnessing the murder of my son,” said Graciela using her right to express a few last words before the court before the defense argument begins, as contemplated in the Victims Law.
The woman stood behind her lawyers Fernando Burlando, Fabián Améndola and Facundo Améndola and looking at the judges María Claudia Castro, Christian Rabaia and Emiliano Lázzari expressed that it was “horrible” for her to see the images where her son was murdered.
“I never dared to look at the videos and here (during the trial) I saw them repeatedly, like thousands of times. It was horrible for me to see the way they murdered my son, ”Graciela said with her hand raised and while she was hugged by her husband, Slilvino Báez.
In her brief presentation, Graciela stated: “It is an anguish that I will never be able to forget, when my son raised his hand imploring mercy while they continued to kick him after kicking and I had that feeling as a mother of throwing myself on him, of being able to help him so that those kicks were for me because I would give my life for my son, a good, decent son, who never believed in evil”.
The woman recalled that she always told her son “to take care of himself, that if there was a fight, try to run away,” and that Fernando replied: “I don’t believe in evil.”
