Mauro Aguilar
09/07/2021 19:26
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 09/07/2021 19:26
Carlos Argüelles had already avoided death once.
In January of this year he was shot, but miraculously saved his life.
The 46-year-old man knew
his destiny was marked
.
He thought, perhaps, that he could dodge it.
But he was wrong: on Monday he was shot when he was in his mechanical workshop with his partner and their children, ages 3 and 18.
A projectile hit his head and the doctors could do nothing to save him.
This time, the hitmen did not fail.
The victim was a repentant witness within a deep and arduous investigation that has
Esteban Lindor Alvarado (42)
at the center of the scene
, a heavyweight from the local underworld who for years managed to stay in the shadows of the crime, but is now detained for leading an illicit association and for instigating a crime.
Alvarado hopes to advance a trial in which he could be sentenced to life in prison.
In the Federal Courts he will also be tried for the drug trade.
Different investigations indicate him as one of the most important drug traffickers in Rosario and in the south of Santa Fe.
Even as a rival of another group that for years managed a good part of that business in the city and which is known as “Los Monos”.
Carlos Argüelles (46).
Argüelles was a mechanic.
And his abilities tempted Alvarado's organization, which decided to add him to collaborate with different maneuvers.
Repairing cars and “packing” them so that they could circulate with a legal appearance was part of the tasks that he developed for the group.
The man now murdered was charged and after being detained for a month he was released.
He decided to speak.
Give details of how Alvarado handled himself.
It was his death sentence.
Despite knowing that her life was at risk, she never agreed to enter the witness protection program.
That forced him to leave the city, perhaps even the province to be protected.
Esteban Lindor Avarado (42).
Photo: JUAN JOSE GARCIA.
The official voice
The Secretary of Security of Santa Fe, Germán Montenegro, attributed the string of crimes to "a bill pass" between drug traffickers.
He assured that Argüelles managed "autonomously, doing his activities" and even conjectured "that he
continued working in the world of crime
."
In this way he tried to explain the reasons why a man who knew he was being persecuted did not agree to change his place of residence.
Twice he refused to be admitted to the protection program.
He hardly had a fixed patrol at his home.
Rosario's chief prosecutor, María Eugenia Iribarren, accepted that one of the main hypotheses for the crime points to Alvarado, who from Marcos Paz's prison was able to order the attack.
The relatives of Elías Salinas, murdered in Pellegrini at 5600. Photo: JUAN JOSE GARCIA.
"Let's not forget that he was a defendant who testified and provided in a reserved statement many details of how Alvarado was handling himself.
He was part of the hard core, he was very close,
”said the judicial official.
“He was aware of the risk he was running and did not want to give up certain issues in his life that put him at risk.
He was a particularly difficult person, ”added Iribarren.
Another investigation into a criminal gang, charged among other tasks with executing crimes for hire, exhibits chilling evidence of the follow-up they had done to Argüelles seeking to eliminate him.
"
Today I send him with San Pedro
" or "
This old son of a bitch is tireless,
" says the hit man in charge of killing him in one of the messages he exchanged with members of the organization that hired him last year.
In an unusual reproach, the man who contacted him, Alejandro “Chuky Monedita” Núñez, asks the murderer before a failed attempt to execute Argüelles: “
If you had got up at seven in the morning and not at ten we would already be counting silver
”.
Garay to 3500, the mechanical workshop where they shot the repentant of the Esteban Lindor Alvarado case.
Photo: JUAN JOSE GARCIA.
“When I made the decision to testify to Alvarado in the future trial, I knew what I was risking.
But I believe that it is a fair act to declare and that God protects me, ”Argüelles assured the newspaper
La Capital
after the bullet attack he suffered last January and from which he was unharmed.
Four people were arrested
for the homicide
, caught the same Monday after a police chase.
Inside the Volkswagen Fox in which they were driving they found a homemade Molotov cocktail with which, it is presumed, they could set the car on fire so as not to leave traces.
Violent climbing
The resounding crime of Argüelles was not, however, the only one recorded in the Gran Rosario at the beginning of the week.
As part of a repeated, fierce, bloody and endless sequence, there were
six violent deaths in twenty hours
, between Monday afternoon and Tuesday noon.
Damián Rodríguez (23 years old), Matías Serrano (29), Federico Rampello (25) and Elías Salinas, whose age was not confirmed, were the new victims of a brutal statistic that
brings the number of murders to 154 in 2021
.
All were attacked with an extended modality within the local crime: a car or a motorcycle that circulates with armed men and from which a previously set target is fired upon.
The
shadow of drug trafficking
seems to extend and touch most of the disputes resolved with bullets.
Salinas was killed at the door of a delicatessen that had already been shot twice, the last one last Thursday.
In addition, of those five crimes, on Monday the name of Luis Torrén (43), brother of Argentinos Juniors defender Miguel Torrén, was added to the death register.
Attacked by bullets last August 15, he died after dying for three weeks at the Clemente Alvarez Emergency Hospital (Heca).
He is the third brother of the soccer player who is murdered.
The first was completed in 2010 and the second last year.
The last bloody hours in Rosario added another resounding episode: a 4-year-old boy was the victim of a shooting attack on Monday in front of his home, in the northwestern part of the city.
A bullet fractured his arm.
On Tuesday he was still hospitalized, although his life was not in danger.
EMJ
Look also
"My strength is to sell sheets and quilts": Alvarado, the rival of Los Monos who was denounced by the repentant murdered
For the Secretary of Security of Santa Fe, the series of crimes is a "bill pass" between drug traffickers.
