After giving his testimony before the Criminal Oral Court 1 of Dolores, which is judging eight rugby players for the aggravated homicide of the 18-year-old law student, coroner Diego Duarte specified the content of his statement to the press.
“I have never seen anything like this,” said the witness, who then added with a broken voice: “The patient suffered damage to the entire central nervous system, both the brain, cerebellum, and brain stem, there is not a single lesion, there are multiple… The truth is that being a father is very strong…”.
Duarte explained that Fernando had “incompatible with life injuries, many injuries to the central nervous system” and added that he believes that “he would not have had a chance to save himself.”
In addition, the forensic doctor affirmed that the picture with which he was found was that of a “visible viciousness on the body, with multiple injuries.”
“They were multi-causal injuries, where there are injuries to various organs, so it is a sum of everything. But even though there are isolated injuries, both in the liver and in the lungs, the most important thing is the nervous system,” he continued.
“The marks that we observe are very evident and compatible with the figure that was imprinted by a shoe,” Duarte responded when asked about a print that they could recognize on the victim’s body.
He also assured that he and his team “recognition” some of the defendants and that they presented “marks compatible with having hit.”
Finally, the professional pointed out that a “neurogenic shock” -what they caused Fernando- means that the brain “suffers significant damage where it stops working, due to irrigation, vascularization, bleeding, so it does not have enough nutrients to continue with life” and added that “to have a blunt head injury and with these injuries within it, without having a fracture, they would have to be “very strong” blows.
“I think he suffers a ‘knock out’ type trauma and then has no chance to defend himself and, in my opinion and from what I see, I think that was what happened, some injuries may be post mortem,” he concluded.
Earlier, when testifying in front of the Dolores court, Duarte had specified that in the autopsy he detected “an acute brain injury” in the victim’s body, which produced “instantaneous death in the patient.”
“The most important lesions are in the brain and face,” he explained, and assured that he also had a “hepatic tear” and that a complementary report determined that there were also other lesions in a lung.
He added that “the most affected parts” in the brain stem “are those that house the vital functions of the organism”, and that it suffered “multidirectional blows” and “enough” to “damage the brain against the bony wall”.
Regarding the imprint that the victim had on his face, he specified that it corresponded to a “direct blow with very high energy.”
