The former Buenos Aires police captain Rubén Alberto García, one of the four defendants for the so-called “Monte Massacre”, in which four boys died after a police pursuit and subsequent crash, said this morning in La Plata, when testifying at the trial by jurors in the case, who wanted to identify the car in which the victims were traveling because he saw “a boy with a beanie” and who, seeing that he did not stop, fired because he thought they were “going to shoot” at him.
“Leandro Ecilapé (another of the accused policemen) shows me a kid in a white cap in a Fiat 147 who did not greet the patrolman. We decided to identify him but he continued. I managed to see the passenger door of the 147 opening. That’s where I was playing that they were going to me to shoot. I take out my regulation weapon, I shoot it from the side to make it stop”, García said this morning before the popular jury and the president of the Oral Criminal Court (TOC) 4 of our city, Carolina Crispiani, who moderates the debate.
And he added: “The explosions that I heard is not that I compare them with a firearm. I did not know if it was an engine. For me they were not shots. I did not shoot to hit the victims. I told my superior. We have been banking on what Come on. I wish I could give the kids back to the parents, but I can’t.” In this sense, and already with tears in his eyes, he continued to say: “I want you to know that we did not do it on purpose, they are all good guys. They have never had a problem. Nobody, none of them pulled the gun. We did not know who was on top I don’t have anything with the guy in the car, I blame it on the drink. You don’t know how the day will unfold. We didn’t know what was going to happen. I’m not the best cop in the world. But I know there are things I don’t have to do them because I live in a town and we all know each other. I’m crying out of anger, not to convince you. I’ve been detained for 4 years now. We can’t do anything. I went and put my face to my boss and my boss I laughed in my face. I don’t want to blame anyone, I made a mistake and I apologize. Life will not reach me to apologize.”
allegations
Thus, the arguments of the trial began in the courts of La Plata. The hearing began at 10 in the building at 8 between 56 and 57, where a popular jury judges the officers Leandro Ecilapé, Manuel Monreal and Mariano Ibañez and the former captain Rubén Alberto García. All of them are accused of being the perpetrators of the homicides of Danilo Sansone (13), Gonzalo Domínguez (14), Aníbal Sansone (22) and Camila López (22), and of seriously injuring Rocío Quagliariello (17), then 13 years old. .
The day will be broadcast through the YouTube channel of the Buenos Aires Supreme Court and that the first to allege will be the prosecutor Mariano Sibuet.
After the presentation of the Public Ministry, the complaints continue: the lawyer Dora Bernardez representing the Domínguez and Suárez families; Margarita Jarque, from the Provincial Commission for Memory (CPM), sponsor of the Sansone and López families; the lawyer Ricardo Minoli to the Quagliarello family; and finally the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) represented by the lawyers Bárbara Juárez and Agustina Lloret.
Finally, the allegations are closed by the lawyers Marcelo Di Siervi, legal representative of Ecilapé, and Guillermó Baqué, defender of Monreal, Ibañez and García.
Testimonials
During yesterday’s session, the policemen Monreal and Ibañez asked to testify and maintained that the victims wanted to “kill” and “run over” one of them with the car, in an attempt to determine their responsibilities in what happened. Monreal was the only one of the two police officers who admitted to having fired at the Fiat 147 car in which the victims were traveling.
“The Fiat 147, ignoring my alert, wants to kill me. I tried to throw myself back and fired two shots at the wheels. I never wanted to hurt anyone and I’m sorry for what happened,” he said. Before Monreal, Ibañez, visibly nervous, told his version of what happened that day, when he was driving a police car and other agents asked for his support to stop the Fiat 147.
“We crossed them and the car fled. When they come towards me, I brake and see that they are coming 50 meters away. Monreal gets out, wants to stop them and I see that they want to crash us. I manage to cut myself off, I thought I was going to crash to me. My job was to make a lock and nothing else,” Ibañez clarified, adding that “he never got off his mobile”, that he did not play the “superhero” and that he “never” fired a shot at the Fiat 147.
Previously, the ballistics expert Lucas Basanta, the computer expert Jose Luis Sánchez and the doctor Karina Cinquegrani, who treated Rocío Quagliarello, the only survivor of the event, at the El Cruce de Florencio Varela hospital, had testified at the hearing.
Basanta’s testimony, which focused on the nine-millimeter bullet found in Domínguez’s left thigh, opened the sixth hearing and complicated the accused police officers by contradicting the theory of the case of defense attorney Baqué, who maintained that the agents had fired shots. in the direction of the floor.
It is expected that tomorrow, after the exposition of the parties, the jury will be able to reach a verdict and declare the police officers guilty or not guilty of the crimes of “aggravated homicide due to abuse of duty as a member of the police forces qualified for the use of firearms, and violation of the duties of a public official”.
The trial began on May 8 with the election of the popular jury and the guidelines of the accusation, in which the prosecutor Sibuet maintained that the accused police officers committed an “atrocious act”, that they acted in an “unmotivated” manner and affirmed that the victims, “when they saw themselves surrounded”, lived moments of “terror, anguish and fear”, for which reason they asked the popular jury to “issue a fair opinion to do honor to justice”.
The so-called “Monte Massacre” occurred at dawn on May 20, 2019, when members of the local police station chased a Fiat 147 along the Route 3 collector in which four adolescents were traveling, three 13-year-olds and one of 14, together with a young man of 22.
The five boys were listening to music when the officers began to chase them for no reason and, according to the records of the municipality’s security cameras, to shoot them, since a policeman was observed in the place of the patrol companion, with half a body. outside and in a shooting attitude, while one of the adolescents was wounded by a bullet in one of his legs.
As a result, the car in which the young people were traveling collided with the trailer of a truck that was stopped on the road and four of the five occupants died on the spot.
