Luis Moranelli
04/10/2021 18:28
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 04/10/2021 6:29 PM
From the floor, with a fire that ran through her body, Rocío Villarreal could only think about one thing:
how many bullets she had left
.
As the shots ricocheted everywhere, he made the decision to pull the trigger until the magazine was empty.
She never lost consciousness, but she does not know how many seconds passed before her companions picked her up, put her on a patrol car and took her to the hospital.
Nor does he remember precisely when he learned that the men who shot him on April 30, 2018 were part of a gang that tried to
take over the
San Justo
police station
to free a detainee.
What he is clear about is everything that came after.
Operations, a one and a half year hospitalization and a spinal cord injury that left her in a wheelchair.
“I always thought that I was going to die in the street, working as a policeman, because that was what I liked.
But I never thought it would end like this ”, Rocía
Clarín
tells him
, three years after the attack, from her home in Isidro Casanova, La Matanza.
His voice breaks easily.
It was not just any week.
This Friday, the Justice released the verdict against the gang that tried to take over the police station.
It was an unprecedented ruling: four defendants were
sentenced to 50 years in prison
.
Rocío followed the sentence by videoconference.
He also had to testify virtually.
She would have liked to be present at the hearing, in front of those who shot her, but the Justice did not find a place adapted for people in wheelchairs.
"They wanted me to go to the Departmental but you could only approach the room by stairs," he says, with a mixture of anger and resignation.
Rocío with former president Mauricio Macri and his wife, Juliana Awada, who visited her during her hospitalization.
Although she admits that it is difficult for her, Rocío tries to think about the future.
More than a choice, he explains, it is an obligation.
He must do it for Ailén, his 6-year-old daughter.
The same one who cried inconsolably hours before the attack, when she was preparing to take her guard.
“Every night he would kiss me goodbye, but this time he would not stop crying and he would ask me not to leave home.
I think he
was warning me
, ”explains the 28-year-old.
Nor does he believe that it is by chance that he stayed at the police station at the request of a colleague, when she always preferred to be on the street.
Less than seconds before the attack he went into an office to write down some data.
"If I stayed at the front desk today, I wasn't alive," she
explains.
35 seconds in hell
The attack occurred at 5.05 in the morning and was recorded by a security camera.
The images show that Rocío approaches the door and sees two armed men dressed as policemen.
He had no time for anything
.
The criminals started shooting and she fell to the ground.
The three colleagues who were with her in the office responded to the shots and the criminals decided to abort the plan to take over the police station to free Leandro David Aranda, accused of a drug crime in a village in La Matanza.
He was one of the 43 detainees who were housed in just three cells.
The commando hit lasted 35 seconds.
Rocío was shot twice, one in the arm and the other in the chest.
They injured his liver, lungs, and spinal cord.
This is how the 1st San Justo police station was left after the attack.
The gang was seeking to free a detainee.
The doctors told her that she was not going to walk again, but she was not resigned.
A rehabilitation
began
that was stopped by the pandemic
.
His family prepared the house where he lives with his parents, his daughter and his brother so that he can continue with the exercises.
When things get complicated, he only thinks of his daughter.
“She is the one that motivates me to continue.
He matured very suddenly because he had to face everything that happened to me.
Sometimes he tells me
'mom, when are you going to get well
?
Or we watch videos and he says
'I want to dance with you'
.
That breaks my soul ”, he says.
When the coronavirus allows it, he will start taking rowing lessons.
And although she is retired from Buenos Aires due to injuries, in her head she is still a police officer: "I see my colleagues and I think I would like to go back to work."
He does not know the origin of his vocation, but when he finished school he was clear about his future.
Despite the resistance of her mother, who preferred that she follow in the footsteps of her older sister and study nursing, she enrolled in the Juan Vucetich School.
A year later, he took his first steps through different police stations in La Matanza, until in 2016 he arrived in San Justo.
A planned attack and an unprecedented failure
The investigation of the prosecutor Ariel Speranza Rossi pointed out that the organizers of the attack were Aranda and his wife, Zahira Ludmila Bustamante (22), who at that time was the mother of a baby a few months old.
As the prosecutor reconstructed in his plea, Aranda "had problems outside" and had to leave the police station because
"he had
Mexican
drug
traffickers
from the village 1-11-14"
in the City of Buenos Aires.
Tomás Axel Sosa (22) and Sebastián Ariel Rodríguez (42) also participated in the attack, who, like Aranda and Bustamante, were sentenced to 50 years in prison by the Oral Criminal Court (TOC) No. 4 of La Matanza.
Rocío started working as a police officer at the age of 19.
Gonzalo Fabián D'Angelo (25) was sentenced to 8 years in prison as a "secondary participant" and the lawyer Leticia Analía Tortosa (41), who was carrying out the defense of Aranda, to 3 years in prison for "facilitation of evasion ”.
Investigators concluded that Tortosa took advantage of one of his visits to the police station to
give his client the telephone number
with which, a few days before and from the jail, he communicated with the gang to plan the event.
The Court also decided to acquit two defendants, Daniel Alberto Rodríguez (33) and Bruno Damián Postigo Marullo (22).
The end of the trial left Rocío mixed feelings.
“I am satisfied with the high penalties, but I cannot understand why they acquitted Rodríguez.
The explanation is that there is insufficient evidence.
The sentence for the lawyer also seemed low, ”she laments.
What follows is a long silence.
Rocío seems to review what she experienced between the attempted seizure of the police station and the long rehabilitation she must face, interrupted by the pandemic.
Goodbye to the dream of being a policeman and the things that he will no longer be able to do with Ailén, his 6-year-old daughter.
Anguished, she does not doubt:
"I would have liked the death penalty to exist here
.
"
LM / GL