Nahuel Gallotta
09/05/2021 17:32
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 09/05/2021 17:32
Virginia Santana (45) had been going to and from her home for seven months to the Female Brigade of the Police of the Tucuman city of Concepción.
Monday to Monday.
At noon and in the afternoon.
His daughter, Rocío Micaela Mendoza (22), was serving a 5-year sentence for stealing a cell phone.
If Virginia didn't come near the station, she wouldn't eat.
Sometimes she sold her clothes so she could buy at a delicatessen.
And if he couldn't afford a pack of cigarettes, he bought loose and took them with him.
At the end of the month, the neighborhood pantries trusted him.
"I used to spend my salary (he works in a dining room) in it," says Virginia from Concepción, a city located 90 kilometers from San Miguel de Tucumán.
“But at least he saw her well.
When they arrested her, she weighed 40 kilos.
Now she was 69.
The day they put her in jail, I felt calm.
I went back to sleep peacefully.
The drug had ruined her
.
That is why several times I went to the police to request that they arrest her.
He believed that nothing bad could happen to him in a police station ”.
Rocío Mendoza was one of the four women who died from burns last Thursday in one of the cells of the Women's Brigade.
The other three were identified as Macarena Maylén Salinas, Yanet Yaqueline Santillán and María José Saravia.
The scene of the tragedy.
Photo: Government of Tucumán.
According to the police version, Salinas "had asked the police to give him a razor blade, but when the guards refused, the woman threw an object at a focus in the cell causing a short circuit that generated the fire."
In addition, seven officers were injured and the fifth and last detainee survived since at the time of the fire she was in another cell.
However, Santana and the families of the other deceased handle another version.
They speak of a claim by the detainees for their place of detention.
Apparently, three of them had been convicted and
demanded transfer
to Unit 4 of Banda del Río Salí, the only women's prison in the province.
As
Clarín
learned
, the place has a capacity of 31 places and houses 32 detainees.
“They lived in a cell measuring three meters by three;
they slept on the floor, on dirty mattresses.
They had no kitchen;
they couldn't cook anything.
They were also unable to study, work, or do recreational activities.
They were so bored.
They knew that in a prison they would be much more comfortable.
And two of the girls lived in San Miguel de Tucumán, 90 kilometers away.
Their families could not travel to bring them food.
They ate thanks to my daughter sharing what I brought her.
For that reason, and because of the detention conditions, they asked for the transfer, ”Virginia clarifies.
The tragedy
On Thursday, around 5 p.m., and as part of a protest, one of the women would have set a mattress on fire.
"
All four died embracing,
" says Virginia.
“Around the Brigade there is a Volunteer Fire Department.
The neighbors heard the screams and ran to look for them.
How can it be that the police officers who were seven meters from the cell have not heard anything or went out to call the fire brigade before?
They let them die
.
The cell, in addition to the lock, had a padlock, ”says Santana.
The woman raises one more irregularity: those detained at the police station should not have access to lighters.
Benito Allende, Santana's lawyer, warns: “My client maintains that she crossed police personnel at the hospital, and that none of them had marks on their clothes or on their bodies.
The judicial system collapsed in the province.
In some police stations there are up to 90 detainees.
Beyond the effort that the family must make to bring them food, while in police stations they do not have access to the benefits that they can obtain in jail, such as temporary exits or parole.
In a police station they must serve the full sentence
”.
On Friday night the families of the two detainees from San Miguel de Tucumán approached the Brigade and blocked the street for a few minutes.
They denounce that the prosecutor Miguel Varela did not receive them, nor did he provide them with information on the status of the case.
EMJ
