A young student from Buenos Aires drowned when she fell from inside a car into a rushing stream of the Manzano Histórico, in Tunuyán, Mendoza. The vehicle was driven by her boyfriend, who managed to save his life.
The couple had been on vacation for several days in the Uco Valley region, 80 kilometers south of the city of Mendoza. "They had traveled with the mother and father of one of them, but these relatives returned to Buenos Aires the day before the accident.
Apparently, the couple had decided to stay on vacation in the place," the head of the Tunuyán Department, Commissioner Juan Ortubia, told Clarín.
The victim Valentina Silva Desicco was 22 years old, lived in the city of Evita, La Matanza, and was a student of Petroleum Engineering at the Technological Institute of Buenos Aires (ITBA).
The car in which he was a passenger would have fallen from a height of 7 meters. "They were coming down from the mountain area and, about 20 meters from passing by an abandoned hotel, the driver lost control of the vehicle and rushed towards the Arroyo Grande," explained the police chief.
The vehicle would have fallen from a height of seven meters in the tourist area known as Manzano histórico, in Tunuyán.
The car went over a bridge under the current and got stuck in some rocks. The occupants opened the doors of the vehicle and were swept away by the water. "The man was able to get out on his own, but the woman wasn't," Ortubia said.
The young woman was swept away by the current of water when, according to her boyfriend's account to the police, she opened the door of the minivan, a Chevrolet Trucker, to try to swim out.
His body was found about two kilometers from the crash site, downstream from the mountain creek.
Her boyfriend, Jorge Alejandro Onisxczuk, is 22 years old, lives in Adrogué, and is also studying Petroleum Engineering at ITBA. He is the only one who has testified about the mechanics of the accident.
According to the police report, after 17 p.m. on Wednesday, a 911 call reported a woman trapped in a vehicle, in the tourist area of Manzano Histórico, in the vicinity of Provincial Route 94.
The witness who alerted the police command only saw when the car was in the creek, she could not explain how it fell. The only testimony of how the accident occurred has been given by the driver in the statement to the tax office of the wine-growing town of Vista Flores.
Once he managed to get to the surface, the driver was helped and transferred by ambulance to the health center in the area, with a diagnosis of polytrauma due to a road accident.
Fire personnel worked at the scene and agents of the Uco Valley Road Police and the Tourist Assistance Police Unit (UPAT) joined the operation and managed to recover the body of the student.
"Only tomorrow we would try to get the vehicle out of the stream, this morning we were evaluating how to do it because it still brings a lot of water," said the Tunuyán police chief.
The driver was released. And although he is charged in the case investigating the accident, he has regained his freedom because for the moment the prosecutor has no reason to arrest him.
Before, he was given an alcohol dose, which came back negative.
The place where the vehicle fell is a dirt road, with rockfalls, little trafficked. Next to the dirt road is the so-called Arroyo Grande. It is the route to the Historic Apple Tree, where José de San Martín rested on his return from his liberating feat, and a few meters from the state hotel Samay Hausi that suffered a fire in 2003 and since then, has been abandoned.
There is no record of another similar accident in the area, according to Mendoza Police records.
Mendoza. Correspondent
PS