The trial against police officer Luis Chocobar comes to an end: the three possible scenarios

05/28/2021 6:00 AM

• Clarín.com

• Police

Updated 05/28/2021 6:00 AM

Ten stab wounds, one robbery, seven shots, a tourist who miraculously saved his life, a dead thief, another detainee and a policeman in the dock.

The Chocobar case was intense in all respects and debated endlessly.

This Friday, almost three and a half years after the event, Justice will decide whether agent Luis Oscar Chocobar (34) acted within the law or not.

The oral trial against the police officer began on October 9, 2020, semi-in-person in Comodoro Py.

The Oral Court for Minors (TOM) N ° 2 also judges one of the assailants who on December 8, 2017, in La Boca, attacked the American tourist Joe Wolek (57).

In the same episode, Chocobar intervened, who went out to run to the thieves.

One of them, who was 17 years old at the time of the incident and therefore his identity is kept confidential, managed to escape and was later arrested.

The other,

Juan Pablo Kukoc (18)

, received two bullets that caused his death.

Ultimately, that moment is the one under discussion about the actions of the policeman, who arrived at the trial accused of "

aggravated homicide in excess of the exercise of duty

."

The development of the debate opened three possible scenarios on what the court will decide: the acquittal requested by the defense, a sentence of three years in suspended prison requested by the prosecution or the life imprisonment claimed by the complaint, which represents the mother of Kukoc.

The definition will be known this Friday afternoon.

The day will start at 10 am

with the "last words" of Chocobar and the assailant who came to trial accused of "

attempted murder criminis causa

" for the wounds caused to Wolek.

Chocobar, backed in one of the trial hearings.

Photo Guillermo Rodríguez Adami.

According to what

Fernando Soto, the defense attorney for the police,

told

Clarín

, Chocobar is expected to speak before judges Fernando Pisano, Jorge Apolo and Adolfo Calvete.

"Surely he will say something related to that he fulfilled his duty, he always maintains that," said the lawyer.

On Wednesday, during the defense arguments, Soto requested the agent's acquittal, considering that he acted in "legitimate defense."

And he maintained that the shots occurred at the corner of Irala and Suárez, when Kukoc, who was hiding a knife between his clothes, turned towards Chocobar.

“He kept the thief from getting on him.

If not, it would have been like the case of Juan Pablo Roldán ”, said the lawyer.

The defense arguments are based on

ballistic and planimetry skills

that indicate that the leads bounced off the ground before hitting Kukoc, for which they argue that Chocobar did not want to shoot directly at the body;

the medical report that shows that the bullets entered from right to left and not from back to front, by which they assure that it was not a case of "easy trigger" since the policeman did not shoot "from behind";

and that the pods were collected in the same place where Kukoc made the turn and after being wounded he ran 30 meters to where he fell badly wounded.

The possible conviction

The second possible scenario for the police officer regarding the outcome of the trial is a suspended three-year prison sentence for "

aggravated homicide in excess of the exercise of duty

."

That was the request of the prosecutor Susana Pernas during her plea last Friday.

If the court agrees with this request, Chocobar

would be disqualified from continuing to work as a police officer but would avoid jail

.

For Pernas, Chocobar "did his duty" when he helped the tourist as he was being stabbed and shouted "

stop, policeman

!"

But he maintains that the assault led to a chase and that, in the last stretch of the chase, the policeman exceeded himself by failing to prevent the thief from being injured.

In this way, he maintained the accusation for which the agent reached the oral trial.

One of the questions from the prosecution at the beginning of the debate was that Chocobar had pulled the trigger with one hand and not with two, as established by police regulations.

Juan Pablo Kukoc (18), the dead thief, with his mother Ivonne.

Finally, the third possible scenario for the officer is

a life sentence

for "

aggravated homicide for having been committed by a police officer with abuse of his functions

", as requested by the complaint in charge of the lawyer Pablo Rovatti, member of the Program of Assistance and Legal Sponsorship of Victims of Crimes of the General Defender of the Nation.

For Rovatti, Chocobar killed Kukoc "from behind" in an "extrajudicial execution" and described the incident as a "trigger-happy" case.

The plaintiff's attorney maintains that "it is false" that Chocobar shot to the ground and that he fired "about six times directly at the body of the person who was running on his back and no longer represented a danger to anyone."

EMJ