Luis Moranelli
05/08/2021 15:35
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 05/08/2021 3:38 PM
Lorena Gervasi (43) lives on the phone.
She waits for calls from the Evita de Merlo Hospital, where her son, Damián Di Bella (23), is hospitalized.
The last part worried her: the doctors told her they were evaluating a new surgery to drain the wound from the gunshot that destroyed her spinal cord.
He can barely move two toes on his right foot.
“It still
doesn't take on a dimension
of what happened to him.
All she wants is to get out of the hospital to be with her sisters and her dog.
He says that at home he will recover faster ”, Lorena explains to
Clarín
.
Damien was in intensive care for two weeks, sedated.
He went through a coronavirus contagion that was detected when he was admitted.
Despite his serious condition, he overcame the disease and returned to have contact with his mother.
In the first meeting, he asked Lorena what had happened to Nicolás Jaime (22), the tattoo artist who on April 17 shot him
14 shots
.
Investigators believe it was an
attack out of jealousy
, after Damián
“liked” a photo
posted on Facebook by a friend, the defendant's girlfriend.
Damián, in his job as a bartender in Palermo.
He had been unemployed by the pandemic but then got a job again.
What they still don't know is if the tattoo artist tricked him into ambushing him.
“On the day of the attack, Damián received a message from his friend inviting him to get together with other boys.
When she was arriving at her house, she
ran into
her
boyfriend
.
I had no dealings with him but I knew him, that's why he stopped the car when he saw him ”, explains Lorena.
What happened next was recorded by a security camera.
Jaime stopped his motorcycle next to Volkswagen Gol de Damián and started shooting.
The victim sped up, turned the corner, and drove two blocks.
He thought he had escaped, but the tattoo artist reappeared.
Again the roar of bullets and despair.
He tried to escape, but
felt a stone
hit
the back of his neck
, he fainted and hit a post, at the corner of Ancón and Lacroze, Merlo.
Stunned, he saw in the rearview mirror the shooter, standing behind the car, adjusting his jacket.
He thought he was going to finish it off
.
"You don't know how ugly it is to feel like they are going to kill you," he told his mother from the hospital.
Nicolás Jaime, the tattoo artist arrested for trying to assassinate Damián Di Bella.
Lorena believes that Jaime thought her son was dead.
That's why he escaped without shooting him again.
Damien fainted.
When he woke up he was surrounded by people.
Agonizing, he managed to tell the first person who assisted him:
"It was Nicolás, my friend's boyfriend
.
"
That piece of information was key to identifying Jaime.
The tattoo artist turned himself in at a police station four days later.
The prosecutor Claudio Oviedo charged him with "attempted murder", a crime with penalties of between 10 and 26 years in prison.
Damien's mother is watching the progress of the case.
He wants to make sure that the man who wanted to kill his son does not go free.
“The prosecutor told me that he will request
preventive detention
, which then has to be validated by the judge.
We don't want there to be surprises ”, he warns.
From joy to tragedy
After a hard year, in which he had
lost his
bartending
job
in a local in Palermo, Damián was beginning to recover.
While he was unemployed, he
sold his car and started a
home cooking business with his sisters.
That allowed him to stay until the end of 2020
he got a job again
in another bar.
A week before Jaime tried to kill him, he had
bought his car
.
"I was very happy.
Seven years ago she lost her dad and started working when she was 15. She always tried hard.
I had
started as a dishwasher
and then went to the bar, ”says Lorena.
Damien was admitted to intensive care for two weeks and overcame a coronavirus contagion.
The damage caused by the shot he received is still unclear.
Photo video capture
He knows that Damien will have to put his energy into recovery.
The aftermath caused by the shot he received in the neck are not yet clear.
Doctors managed to extract the bullet and confirmed that it suffered
serious damage to the spinal cord
.
“He has the entire left sector of the body immobilized and on the right side he can only move two toes.
He also
lost a large part of his teeth
due to the crash, ”explains Lorena.
She visits him every day in the hospital.
He brings her water, cookies and left a radio for her to listen to music.
She also helped him record a video for his younger sister, with a very special request: that she take care of Samuel, her dog.
Damien with his dog Samuel.
He wants to go home to recover with his pet and his sisters.
Remember everything that happened that night.
He is convinced that it was the tattoo artist who wrote to him on Facebook posing as his friend and
tricked him into ambushing him
.
As you review that night, you think about what would have happened if you picked up another young woman from the same group earlier.
"Maybe if you were with a girl in the car, he wouldn't shoot you," his mother tried to convince him.
Damien's answer left her frozen:
"No, you didn't see the look he had
.
"
