Sunday April 16, 2023 | 2:00 p.m.
“They killed him premeditated. He was already inert on the floor and they did not stop, due to the euphoria of hitting until the desire to kill a person was satisfied. It was not a moment of anger but it was to satisfy the desire to kill someone kicking a person”. This is how Noelia Oviedo (39) defined the murder of her husband, the night watchman Juan Carlos Katz (37), who died after a brutal beating by five people on May 11, 2014, in the Prosol II neighborhood of Posadas .
Due to the fact, in 2021 the Justice determined the prescription of the case due to the passage of time, but last Friday the case had a great novelty. Through different judicial and police sources, this medium was able to confirm that after an order by Judge Balor himself, the Misiones Police Homicide Department arrested four of the five defendants, who were housed in a cell at the disposal of Justice.
A little bit of peace
Due to this recent news of the arrest of the alleged murderers of the serene Katz, Oviedo told El Territorio that he cannot explain “the sensation of millions of things that surfaced both in memory and in impotence at the time, due to everything that has happened and all this struggle”.
“Today I know that there are four detainees and that gives me a bit of peace that I need,” he claimed with signs of relief.
“The feeling I have is not one of joy because it would not be the right word. But it is one more step towards closing such an aberrational stage,” he said, adding that “it is a great advance that there was not at the time. This also generates in me to be able to believe in Argentine Justice. I think we are on the right track”.
Regarding how the entire Katz family is processing it, the interviewee mentioned that “at the time it was hard because what happened was very aberrational”, explaining that everything was harder for her children who were very young at the time.
“They saw their father that they left him lying at the entrance of the house,” he lamented
Regarding the brutal attack that Katz suffered in May 2014, just three blocks from his home, he expressed that “it was all very aberrational, because not even an animal is killed like those boys did. Because of the way in which Juan Carlos convulsed and they kept kicking him, I know they went to kill.”
“I tried to erase that moment from my life because it was a struggle to get to this point. But thank God we are fine,” he mentioned, adding that for the family to remain stable, his children were treated by psychologists.
When asked what she knows about what happened that night, the woman recalled that “he stopped in the square, in front of the house of a girl who was like a relative and they were celebrating her birthday. He passed by with his little delivery truck, another work that he had apart from being serene and that’s where everything happened,” he said, adding that after the confrontation he learned that Juan Carlos had with one of the defendants, “he ran to his truck after they hit him with something forceful that He broke a rib.”
Along these lines, he narrated that Juan Carlos wanted to get into the truck, but he couldn’t because they kicked in the door so he wouldn’t do it.
Noelia assured that the one who prevented her husband from not being able to get to safety was “precisely the defendant who never testified, alias Pipito”, who at the close of this edition would be the only one involved that it is still not certain if he is detained or continues to be a fugitive .
In addition, he recalled some of the defendants’ statements. Specifically that of Armando Asunción, who according to the woman when describing the event “directly accused Maximiliano L.”.
In the statement, the person under investigation mentioned that when Juan Carlos was already lying unconscious on the floor, Maximiliano stomped on his head with forceful blows, having that day booties with steel studs.
Regarding the years following the homicide that left a family devastated, the interviewee indicated that “he was the breadwinner of the family. I had to go out into the street to bring bread for my children. Today I dedicate myself to the same than him and I am a neighborhood night watchman,” said Noelia, who looks after the streets of a part of the Itaembé Miní neighborhood.
In reference to the early release of the five defendants that took place two months after the crime, as the episode was considered a “homicide in a fight”, the woman said that “I had a very hard fight for that. More with the lawyer Rodrigo Calderón who was next to me.”
He also explained that when in 2021 he found out that the statute of limitations had expired and that all the defendants were going to be left without a record “as if nothing happened here,” Noelia approached the court to speak with the prosecutor in charge. “He told me that the decision that was made was fine,” she mentioned.
“When he told me that, I felt angry and impotent, because these guys were not even going to have a criminal record,” he continued.
For this reason, Noelia stated that she appealed by working hard with her lawyers, since when they found out about the decision made at that time they had a very short period of time, which was summarized “in hours.”
The turn that gives hope
However, although on that occasion they had been waiting for something new, knowing that the case would come to nothing, a few months ago they found out something that would bring a little hope to the family again for justice to be done: the appeal had its fruit and “the ruling came out in my favor. For that I thank the prosecutor (Andrés) Poujade, because without him this could not be possible,” he alleged, alluding to the change in the situation of the suspects that occurred in March of the year past, at the request of an opinion of the Chamber of Appeals of Misiones.
Then the judges revoked the statute of limitations and ordered further investigation, something that generated “a little hope and that this does not go unpunished.”
The widow of Juan Carlos also contributed how difficult it is to have her husband’s murderers so close, since “one of those boys lives behind my house and another in the corner of my block. Throughout these 9 years they passed constantly around here and it was like living it all over again.
For this reason, he expressed that the most affected by this were his children, “because they are traumas that remain. They are impotence that they have as children, more because they saw how they brought their father and how they left him lying at the door of my house.” , he narrated.
On the other hand, with notable anguish in her voice, Noelia confessed that she still can’t believe or settle what happened in her head, because “I can’t understand the way she left.” In addition, she acknowledged that it was very difficult for the whole family to come back and “there was no explanation.”
“They took away from my children the right to have a father, to live moments and for him to see them grow. They also took away from him that in his old age he can enjoy a table with his grandchildren,” reflected Noelia, who told with great enthusiasm that his 21-year-old son is working part-time and signed up for a security force, from which they are waiting for an answer to find out if he can enter.
On the other hand, Oviedo left a clear message: “For justice to be done, I hope that they are all imprisoned, to at least compensate a little for the damage they did. Because the impotence of seeing them on the street as if nothing happened, that it is worse”.
Finally, the interviewee recalled Juan Carlos as “a fighting man, who went out into the street so that we did not lack anything. I remember him as someone happy. He was always a good father present,” closed the woman who was in a relationship for more than 15 years of Juan Carlos Katz, victim of a brutal attack that ended his life in 2014.
Katz was found dying at the scene and taken to his home by neighbors. From there, Noelia transferred him to Caps de Itaembé Mini, where they loaded him into an ambulance that took him to the Madariaga Hospital. The forecasts anticipated the inevitable and his death was on May 16 at 2 in the morning.
