“I am sincerely sorry for what happened.”Walter Zanotti assured the Guarantees Judge, Estefanía Sauli, who must define what penalty he imposes, after the popular jury declared him guilty of the attempted femicide of his ex-partner, whom he suffocated and beat in the house they shared. She was saved by her six-year-old son, who entered the room and yelled at her father not to kill her. The man left the room, started the fire in the car that was parked in the garage and fled. Firefighters had to take the woman and child out through a window.
In this hearing, Zanotti even apologized to the chief prosecutor, Agustín García.. She had a very different attitude than the one he showed at the trial, in which he declared that he attacked her ex-partner because “I wanted her to be unconscious so that later when she woke up we could discuss well.”“, everything that she had been doing and I had found out.”
“I hope for him and his family that he is sincere in what he is saying,” García responded.
The judge must assess the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, in a scale that goes from 10 to 30 years. The prosecutor requested that he be given 25.
On July 3, 2023, in the house in the Cuenca XV neighborhood of the city of Neuquén, Zanotti placed a sleep inducer on the mate. He baited one of his ex-partners, with whom he was separated but still lived. He waited for her to lie down on her and there he placed himself on top of her, put a cloth soaked in alcohol over her mouth and covered her nose. When he woke up, the woman thought he was going to abuse her. They struggled. “I know I’m going to die, but at least I’m going to fight, I’m going to try to fight, to defend myself”he told the jury in his nearly four-hour testimony.
He told her: «you bought underwear to wear with the other and you cheated on me, and on the boys. “Now I’m going to kill you.”
“There was an action that is homicidal, an action aimed at attacking, trying to take the lives of two people”, stated the prosecutor in his argument. He noted that there was a “planned action”, since in the trial it was proven that in the previous days he bought the sedative at the pharmacy, and that Monday he modified the family routine so that one of his daughters was not in the house at that time.
García pointed out the helpless state in which the victim was, and recalled that if the firefighters had delayed three more minutes it would have been fatal, since the car could have also exploded.
“It was not an untimely action that arose in the heat of an argument”he reiterated.
He stated that in addition to the injuries caused to the woman, the material damage to the home must be added, which required expenses to be incurred to make it habitable again, as well as the cost involved in the loss of the vehicle. He maintained that after this event the family was left “with limited financial means”, and today the couple’s two oldest daughters must work to help with the income.
The prosecutor emphasized that the woman did not go through a single episode, but rather suffered chronic gender violence, which has consequences. The same is the child who He had to “watch his father violently attack his mother” and during the fire he felt “That he was going to die”. He highlighted that the person who was taking care of him ended up putting him in danger, in his own house which should be a safe place.
She stated that although the couple was separated and she had the right to start a new relationship, even in the scenario of infidelity does not justify that Zanotti has acted in that way.
The only mitigating factor he considered was that He had no countable criminal record.
Defender Marcelo Sterz did not even mention this point. In his very brief argument he indicated that he was not going to refute the popular jury’s verdict. He emphasized that Zanotti was not addicted to alcohol or drugs and that he had shown his remorse. He asked for the minimum sentence of 10 years.
The sentence he received is for both acts. In the case of the ex-partner, for attempted murder quadruplely aggravated: by the bond, by treachery, by the ideal means used (fire) and by femicide. As for the child, it is doubly aggravated: by the bond and by the means used.
The ruling will be known on Monday, April 15.