Monday December 26, 2022 | 0:59 a.m.
The family of Lucas Escalante, the 26-year-old who disappeared on December 9 in the Buenos Aires town of Florencio Varela along with his friend Lautaro Morello, who was found murdered and burned last week in a nearby field in Guernica, will hold a march today in front of the Florencia Varela prosecutor’s office to claim for his “appearance alive.”
According to what Lucas’s sister, Romina, announced through social networks, the mobilization will take place starting at 10 in the morning on Avenida Presidente Perón at 400, in front of the offices of the Functional Instruction Unit (UFI) 2 of Florencio Varela, who is in charge of the investigation.
In turn, in the message spread through Facebook, Romina Escalante wrote: “Enough of impunity, enough of allowing the police to do what they want. We want Lucas now!”
Police sources indicated that almost 200 troops from the Florencio Varela Police Station carried out a series of raids on provincial route 210 last Thursday, from the town of Brandsen to Domselaar, in the San Vicente district.
This operation was carried out with the disapproval of the Escalante family, which requested that the search be carried out by federal forces.
Meanwhile, yesterday human remains were found in a bag in Brandsen, although police spokesmen indicated that they would not belong to the wanted young man since they are of “old data” and that they speculate that they belong to a person buried in an adjoining cemetery in the zone.
On the other hand, for the crime of Lucas’s friend, Lautaro Morello (18), Cristian Centurión, son of a senior commissioner and cadet of the force, and his cousin, Maximiliano Centurión, continue to be detained.
Both are charged as alleged co-perpetrators of Morello’s murder, within the framework of the case being carried out by prosecutor Mariana Dongiovanni, in charge of Florencio Varela’s UFI 2.
The arrests of both suspects occurred on Friday, December 16, after the analysis of security cameras and cell phone antennas.
In this sense, the latest records of Escalante’s communications coincide on the day and time with the area of the Centurión residence, located in the town of La Capilla, Florencio Varela’s district, as established by the investigations.
Meanwhile, the other detainee, Maximiliano Centurión, appears in Morello’s latest communications records and his cell phone antennas hit an area near La Capilla.
Lastly, the investigators analyzed the images from a security camera at a Florencio Varela service station, in which Cristian Centurión is seen around 12:30 a.m. on December 10 loading gasoline into a white canister.
Prosecutor Dongiovanni charged the Centurion cousins with the crime of “double aggravated homicide by treachery and cruelty.”
For the representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, “on December 9, 2022, at 11:00 p.m., at least two male subjects, later identified as Cristian Alejandro Centurión and Maximiliano Tomás Centurión, strangled and beat Lautaro Tomás. Morello, with clear intentions of killing him.”
According to the accusation, both caused the victim “multiple injuries to his skull and jaw, finally causing his death by strangulation (…), thus deliberately causing excessive suffering (…) and taking advantage of his defenseless state, to then dispose of the body and cremate its remains, in a rural area” of the town of Guernica.”
Morello and Escalante were last seen last Friday, December 9, in the town of Bosques, Florencio Varela’s match, when the latter went to look for the other to go out to celebrate the victory of the Argentine National Team in a World Cup match in Qatar aboard a car that appeared on fire the next day.
Morello’s body was found around 9:30 p.m. on Thursday the 15th next to the Buen Ayre highway under construction, in Guernica, President Perón’s district.
Police sources indicated that the body was lying face down, “semi-calcined and in an advanced state of decomposition.”
In the same place, a black Vans shoe appeared, similar to the one Morello wore, so from the beginning the investigations hypothesized that it was him.
