Luis Moranelli
04/24/2021 18:55
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 04/24/2021 6:56 PM
Gabriel Pigliacampi knew he didn't have time.
He had lost a lot of blood, his lips were dry, and his pulse was dropping.
He had already called 911, but figured that was not enough.
That's why he took out his cell phone and started recording:
“They shot me, please look, they shot me.
I'm in the Plaza Santa Rita, they wanted to steal my truck, I have a shot, ”he
shouts desperately in the images that later went viral.
The message was addressed to a WhatsApp group made up of journalists from the western area, colleagues from Pigliacampi.
He recorded it in José C. Paz's Plaza Santa Rita, while he was assisted by a woman who tried to make
a tourniquet out of a shirt
to stop the loss of blood.
The 47-year-old journalist even sent the video before fainting.
It was at that moment that the police arrived, alerted by a call to 911 that he himself had made while running for help.
“When he saw my condition, the commissioner decided to get me on the patrol car and take me to the hospital.
'We have to move him because he is leaving us', I heard him say before they put me on my cell phone ”, Gabriel tells Clarín, from his home in San Miguel.
He spent one night at the Mercante Hospital, where they decided not to operate on him due to the risk involved in trying to extract the bullet, which was lodged in the abdomen.
“They told me they could refer me, but given the demand for coronavirus, I preferred to control myself at home.
I have to watch out for fever and I take pain relievers ”, explains Gabriel, who studied Nursing.
The bullet entered his back, near the kidney, traveled through the abdomen and rose from the navel area to below the nipple.
There I stay.
“At times it causes me a lot of pain.
They are points that come and go
.
They told me that I have to wait for the projectile to settle in the body, ”he says.
The journalist was shot Thursday afternoon by three thieves who tried to steal his Ford Ranger truck.
He had gone to visit a friend who had been isolated by a close contact of covid and preferred to meet him at the door, to chat for a few minutes outdoors and at a distance.
Gabriel Pigliacampi, journalist shot during a robbery in José C. Paz.
While they were talking, Gabriel saw three young men walk by, walking in single file.
They passed in front of him and after a few meters all three stopped at the same time.
"
I realized that they were going to rob me
and I saw that one made the gesture to remove a weapon from his waist," he says.
Gabriel's reaction was to throw the keys on the hood of the truck and start running.
As he escaped, one of the assailants shot him in the back.
The sequence was recorded by a security camera.
His friend would later tell him that before shooting one of the thieves shouted:
"It's cobani
.
"
“
I felt a heat and managed to run faster
.
I did a block and a half and got to the plaza.
There, many people helped me, especially the girl who is heard in the video.
I still couldn't find her to thank her for what she did, ”she laments.
A few minutes later he was already on top of the patrol car, heading for the hospital.
Before he came to record a video for his three daughters, 6, 7 and 12 years old.
Sent it to a friend.
“In the message I spoke to them in case something happened to me.
I had no hope.
I was seconds away from dying
”, admits Gabriel, director of the Internet site Noticias.
For the case there are still no detainees.
Sources in the case informed Clarín that they are analyzing the images from the security cameras to identify the thieves.
One of the videos in the possession of the investigators shows the moment in which the thieves, a few blocks from the place of the robbery, flee in a car in which a fourth accomplice was waiting for them.
“
They are not thieves.
They are killers
.
I did not resist and left him the keys so that they could take the truck, but they still tried to kill me, ”he says.
And thanks: "I was born again."
LM
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