A ballistics expert assured today that two of the four Buenos Aires police officers accused of the so-called “Monte Massacre”, in which four boys died after a police pursuit and subsequent crash that occurred in 2019 in San Miguel del Monte, shot at the car in the that the victims were traveling and ruled out that the agents had fired in the direction of the apartment.
In this way, when declaring in the jury trial that is taking place in the La Plata courts, the criminal expert Lucas Basanta complicated the accused police officers Rubén Alberto García, Manuel Monreal, Leandro Ecilapé and Mariano Ibáñez by contradicting the lawyer’s theory defender Guillermo Baqué, who maintains that the agents had fired shots in the direction of the apartment.
Basanta’s testimony, which focused on the 9 mm bullet found in the left thigh of one of the victims, Gonzalo Domínguez (14), opened the sixth hearing of the jury trial that is followed by these agents for the murder of the adolescent 14 years old and his friends Danilo Sansone (13), Camila López (13) and Aníbal Suárez (22).
Gonzalo’s mother, Susana Ríos, was listening to the expert’s statement in the courtroom. She asked to leave when the witness began to give details of the shot that wounded her son.
“The deformation of the projectile is at the front and does not have a rough characteristic. It may have hit a bone or an interposition curtain, such as a car sheet, and then entered the victim’s body. No It gives me the feeling that it has hit a hard, flat surface,” Basanta explained to the 12 jurors and the president of the Oral Criminal Court (TOC) 4 of the Buenos Aires capital, Carolina Crispiani.
On the other hand, the specialist, dressed in a light blue jacket and a dark blue shirt, attributed said shot to a Bersa Thunder Pro weapon number 13-H57836, which was Manuel Monreal’s regulation weapon, and recounted the procedure to identify it.
“When a shot is fired, inside the weapon the cartridge breaks down into the projectile and the served case. The barrels of the guns have the rifling on the inside. They are gutters arranged inside the barrel. At the microscopic level they leave marks on the surface of the projectile. They are the fingerprints of the barrel, which remain on the projectile,” the expert described. In turn, Basanta awarded the four pods seized during the investigation of the case to the regulatory weapon of Captain García. “The scabbards also have traces of the weapon with which he shot himself, since they impact against a surface called the shoulder and are marked,” he explained.
Now it is expected that during today’s session the specialists who treated the only survivor of the massacre, Rocío Quagliariello (17), during the 24 days of recovery that she had to undergo at the El Cruce Hospital in Florencio Varela, will testify. .
Karina Cinquegrani, a doctor at the Hospital del Cruce, assured that Rocío underwent five operations, having been left in critical condition during “all the time she was hospitalized.” There were 24 days with a fracture of the lower jaw, ankle and they placed nails.
Rocío declared that she was “walking with her friends” and “we did nothing.” “As soon as they began to follow us, I remember that she was bent over and they hit Gonzalo. We didn’t know what to do, we were walking and out of nowhere they started running from us. We were inside the car and they were chasing us, ”she added.
At the same time, it was learned that there is a possibility that the accused policemen, Mariano Ibañez, Leonardo Ecilapé, Manuel Monreal and Rubén Alberto García, begin to testify before the popular jury, made up of 18 members of civil society (12 are holders and the remaining 6 are substitutes). After that, the pleadings stage will begin tomorrow, where the parties will present their accusatory and defense arguments, and then the jury will deliberate to deliver its verdict.
The defendants declare
The first to testify is Mariano Ibañez, 22, from Lobos. That day he “performed judicial functions.” He arrived at the guard shortly after 5 in the morning and met Monreal, with whom he attended the Costanera “responding to a call.”
“I had to go to a home. I ask for support and make a U-turn. I see the Fiat, it crosses, Monreal gets out and wants to stop the car that was coming. At that moment I start driving ”, began the story.
“In that place there were many robberies. It was reinforced with two mobiles. That’s all registered. Whenever we see a suspicious car making maneuvers we try to identify it. We signal to him with the beacons to stop. The mobile has some devices that you press and it turns on the light and the beacons… sometimes it did not work or it lasted 10 minutes and it turns off, ”he continued.
Ibañez affirmed that he was only in charge of “making the lock. I didn’t get off my mobile or shoot.” Then he heard explosions “I think I was two meters from the (Fiat) 147, I could tell from the noise.”
“The car arrives at Costanera and turns into Almirante Brown. When Monreal comes down and stops in the street, I don’t know if he took out the gun, I don’t remember, but I do know that he raised his hand”. When he arrived at the place, he saw two companions together with “part of the boys who were scattered on the floor.” “I remember the floor and under the truck. One in the truck, two on the ground and I think one later on,” he explained.
“I don’t remember if the siren and beacons were working because (the mobile) overheated and sometimes it didn’t work. I have no property over what Monreal does. I take care of mine. I don’t understand why I’m accused of murder. I did not see Monreal shooting, I did see him raising his hand but not shooting,” he added.
The trial in La Plata
The trial began on Monday, May 8, with the election of the popular jury that must define whether the accused police officers are 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 weapons.” of fire, and violation of the duties of a public official”.
In the accusation guidelines, the trial prosecutor Mariano Sibuet said that the accused police officers committed an “atrocious act”, that they acted in an “unmotivated” manner and affirmed that the victims, “when they found themselves surrounded”, experienced moments of “terror, anguish and fear”, for which he asked the popular jury to “issue a fair opinion to honor 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.
