The Buenos Aires Minister of Security Sergio Berni received a brutal attack when he was present at General Paz, where companions of a murdered bus driver were picketing in protest. After getting off the helicopter, it was at that moment that the official was hit with stones, bottles, and tomatoes, and when he approached the crowd, he was punched and kicked several times.
Berni ended up with several wounds and one of them bleeding very close to the nose. He arrived without police custody and only accompanied by some of those closest to him, for which reason the protesters surrounded him and cornered him against a wall.
There were moments of extreme tension because there were several pineapples that the minister received, whom they rebuked and called a “liar” repeatedly. They also threw him to the ground where he was kicked. Even from the top of that wall they did not stop throwing blunt objects at him.
When asked why he only went to speak to the protesters, he replied even more defiantly: “Because I always go alone, I am always alone in my life.” There were several drivers who yelled at him that “they are killing us all.”
“I came to talk. We just finished arresting the person who is supposed to be the perpetrator… I’m here, first because I understand the problem they’re going through every day. There’s no one who comes to show their faces and I’ll take whatever it is. No I run like the others, I’m here,” Berni said as the insults continued and they continued to throw items at him. “I’m not hiding and I’m here! There are no magical solutions, I’m here to work for you,” he continued while they yelled “son of a bitch” and the policemen tried to separate him from the attackers. “We are going to talk somewhere, we can’t talk here,” insisted the minister, who managed to shout “it hurts me like you do and I come here alone.”
Very close to there, the Infantry was stationed, but that Force did not advance, fearing that the situation could become even worse. It was also learned that they were trying to evacuate the official but he repeatedly refused, so he stayed in the place in the middle of a hostile climate.
It should be remembered that the protest began this morning when a driver of line 620 who was about to retire was shot in the chest by criminals who went up to rob passengers and who, before fleeing, shot each other with a Cash from the City Police who was traveling on board, in the town of Virrey del Pino, La Matanza district, judicial and police sources reported.
In the last hours, a young man was arrested as the alleged perpetrator of the shot that killed Daniel Barrientos (65), while they kidnapped a burnt-out car that is suspected to have been used by the assailants to escape and a weapon with which they would have killed the driver. .
As a result of the crime, the bus drivers of the Nuevo Ideal SA company, which has 620 lines among its lines, began a strike to demand safety, to which workers from at least 85 other lines joined, making cuts in the General Paz Avenue, near Lomas del Mirador, where the incidents with Berni broke out, and on Route 3, in Virrey del Pino, both in La Matanza.
The event occurred this morning, after 4:30 a.m., when two criminals boarded the bus driven by Barrientos at the stop located at the intersection of Bernardino Escribano and Cullen streets, in the Vernazza neighborhood. Under threats with weapons, the assailants tried to rob the few passengers who were traveling at that time in the transport, among them Yamila, a young woman who was next to her 8-year-old daughter with a disability sitting in the first seat.
“She was in the first seat with her daughter. One of the criminals got in and pointed at her and the other, at the driver. They took her backpack and cell phone and they shot the driver and ran away,” Virginia said. , mother of the eyewitness of the crime. Based on what her daughter told her, who this morning testified as a witness before the investigators, Virginia said that the criminals “were out” and that her daughter or granddaughter could have been victims as well as the driver, who “did not know resisted”.
According to sources of the investigation, among the passengers was an officer from the Urban Containment Operations Department (DUOC), Barracas headquarters, of the City Police, who was returning to his home after providing services. After the driver was shot at point blank range, the officer called out a halt and fired at the assailants when they got off the bus to escape in a support car in which a third accomplice was riding. According to what the witness was able to tell his mother, the criminals “were between 20 and 25 years old, they were well dressed, neat, and they were not from the neighborhood.”
As a result of the shot, the bus driver died at the scene, so both the Homicide prosecutor on duty in La Matanza, Gastón Duplaa, and the summoned police experts, went to the scene to carry out the first steps and clarify the circumstances of the made.
The prosecutor was preparing to investigate the arrested suspect today, who was located when he was traveling in a red car and was apparently recognized by witnesses. However, before that procedure, Duplaa will submit the apprehended to a lineup, the sources added.
After the crime. A fellow driver of the victim, who identified himself as Leandro, said this morning in dialogue with Radio Con Vos, that Barrientos was about to retire and described him as “a great guy.” “We called him (by Barrientos) ‘Musculito’, he was about to retire next month, he was an excellent person, a great guy,” added Leandro, who recalled that another colleague was killed in that area of La Matanza in 2018 , Leandro Alcaraz.
“The neighborhood is like all the neighborhoods here in La Matanza, you can’t go anywhere. Now we are without service and we are having an assembly,” explained Leandro, who added: “We are tired of the same promises, of security guarantees that we never have. We don’t know when we leave our houses if we come back.”
“The death of our partner adds to a number of episodes of insecurity that have been affecting drivers, especially throughout the AMBA, for which the UTA says enough and anticipates that the measures will be deepened as long as the authorities do not guarantee the minimum safety conditions at work in our entire sector”, says the union’s letter, signed by its general secretary Roberto Fernández.
This morning, through a statement, the Automotive Tramway Union (UTA) reported that, as a result of the driver’s crime, from 7:30 a.m., a measure of force was initiated. Later, chaos arrived when the Buenos Aires Minister of Security appeared, who was received with blows and stones.
