Within hours of spreading Fundamentals of the ruling for the murder of police officer Santiago Mansicidor The controversy continues over the resonant case. The film record of the municipality of Berrotarán of the moment in which a group of young people attacks and causes the death of the officer generates totally opposite interpretations.
In addition, in the ruling, Judge Natacha García said she had warned that “the management of the evidence -by the police investigators- was strongly oriented towards the demonization of the defendants, three of whom were adolescents at the time it occurred. the fact”.
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He Mansicidor’s murder was perpetrated on January 13, 2021, at the exit of a bar, in the town of Berrotarán. Naked eye, The video shows how the group made up of Lucas Abatedaga, Lucas Dallago and three other youths (younger than the date of the incident) attacked police officer Santiago Mansicidor with blows and kicks.
It can be seen how a member of the group bends down and reaches for the police officer’s regulation weapon, another takes it out and in the melee shoots the officer. Mansicidor received four shots, in different parts of the body. He tried to get up and get on the sidewalk. There they continued to kick him. He died almost immediately, en route to the hospital.
For his mother, Dolly Ceballo, there is no doubt that the group acted like a mob with the intention of killing her son, whom they would have hated because he was a police officer, just like his father. People close to the family compare the attack with the murder of Fernando Baéz Sosa (with five rugby players sentenced to life). Meanwhile, the defense maintains that the case could have ended like that of Blas Correa (the young man from Cordoba murdered by a policeman).
It is known that Mancisidor had a word exchange with Abatedaga in the pub. At 4, he got out and went to his car (a Fiat Palio parked in front of the square). According to the instruction, “on realizing that he was being pursued and that they outnumbered him,” he took his 9-millimeter Bersa pistol from his vehicle and yelled at them: “Go away, go away.”
The request for elevation to trial, said that the defendants “by mutual agreement, left the entertainment venue in search of Mansicidor with the purpose of killing him.”
But in the trial it would not have been proven that there was an agreement to commit the crime. Justice, by majority, only sentenced Abatedaga, who fired the weapon, to 18 years in prison.
10 judges and three positions on the Mansicidor case
The only unanimous decision of the Court was to acquit Lucas Dallago considering that he did not get involved in the fight. It is interpreted that at one point he picked up the weapon (Abatedaga took it out and fired) and finally raised it again to throw it on top of a roof, so that the dispute would not continue.
The other three minors who appear in the video kicking were not considered to have proven murderous intent. It was judged that only minor injuries had been inflicted on the victim. Abatedaga’s defender, Enrique Zabala, argues that the kicks they gave Mansicidor, when he was already wounded by a bullet and had barely managed to drag himself to the sidewalk, did not cause him any injury.
For Zabala, the police officer could have left “instead of waiting, with a 9mm weapon and 17 rounds in the magazine, for five unarmed young men.”
There were three positions among the judges: the vocal Natacha García, considered that the act was only committed by Abatedaga and accused it of qualified homicide by the use of a weapon. Three popular juries adhered. Consequently, by majority (of four votes), the Court considered the agreement to kill Mansicidor not proven.
On the other hand, three other people’s juries considered that Abatedaga was the only perpetrator, but they also believed that he shot because he hated him, because of his status as a police officer.
Finally, Judge Daniel Vaudagna, with the support of two popular juries, opined that Abatedaga and the three minors (what the family calls a mob) had the intention of killing Mancisidor. They were of the opinion that Mansicidor did not provoke, favor or produce any aggression, but rather “acted defensively by trying to avoid the imminent attack, through actions (dissuasive shots into the air) demonstrating the intention of attacking the youths.” Vaudagna did not consider it proven that he was killed because of his police status.
Why don’t they consider Mansicidor’s aggressors “patota”?
Those close to the victim maintain that the officer Mansicidor had already been attacked years ago “for being a soldier.” They insist that the defendants were “a troublesome mob” in the town and that they hated the officer because his father (a retired police officer) had arrested Abatedaga’s father years ago.
The defense attorney affirms that this event would have occurred before his client was born. “She was not a gang, none of the five had a criminal record,” he remarks. He contrasts the video of the attack with another previous record, which, according to him, shows how the policeman rushes out of the nightclub in search of the service weapon he had in the car. “He started the conflict (…) he had 19 seconds to get in the car and leave,” he says.
The lawyer maintains: “This could have been another Blas Correa case. It’s not like the murder of Fernando Báez. The kicks that were seen, it has been proven, did not leave any injuries, none were fatal. The only time they hit him is when he falls to the ground and by then, Mansicidor had already fired four or five shots. He shot the boys who were unarmed before,” Zabala insists.
“We do not share the verdict because we have reliable evidence of the participation of each of the defendants (…). There are acquittals that we do not understand (…) They all participated decisively and decisively in this murder,” said the family’s lawyer, José Abrile, who will analyze the grounds of the ruling to try to overturn the sentence.
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