The man who stole the weapon and killed officer
Maribel Zalazar (35)
testified this Thursday before the judge in the case and acknowledged the crime but said he did it
thinking that the victim was someone else
.
This is
Oscar Gustavo Valdez (29)
, a Paraguayan national, who is being held for killing Zalazar with a shot to the neck when the policewoman was assisting him at the Retiro station on subway line C, on Tuesday at noon.
Valdez was investigated by the judge in charge of the case, Martín Sebastián Peluso, of the National Criminal and Correctional Court 9, and will remain in custody accused of the crime of "
aggravated homicide for having been committed against a member of a security force"
in to the detriment of officer Zalazar,
"in a real contest with serious injuries"
that he caused to a subway employee.
Maribel Salazar, the City Police officer murdered in the subway
During the hearing, the defendant said he was the author of the shot that killed the policewoman but said he thought the victim was someone else, according to judicial sources.
A judicial source confirmed to
Télam
that the detainee was assisted by an official defender and that he stated
"very synthetically"
the sentence in which he acknowledged having fired the policewoman's weapon, although he excused himself by saying that he believed that the victim was another person. .
When the judge tried to go deeper, the defendant refused to answer questions, so the investigation ended.
The murder occurred when the officer was trying to put Valdez on a stretcher together with a private security employee of the subway and, at one point, the man pounced on the policewoman, grabbed her gun and started shooting.
One of the bullets hit Zalazar in the neck, who died minutes later at the Churruca Hospital.
Based on the witness accounts, the investigators were able to reconstruct that it all started when Valdez, who was coming in a formation as a passenger, arrived at the station and, as he had stated that he felt bad and had pain in his legs, he was assisted. by subway personnel who brought him a chair and offered him a glass of water.
As his ailment supposedly persisted, the subway staff requested a stretcher and the presence of the officer, as well as doctors.
Officer Zalazar approached the place, but when they wanted to put him on the stretcher, the man became violent, there was a struggle, he snatched the policewoman's weapon from its holster and began shooting.
Despite the fact that she had her bulletproof vest on, the policewoman was hit by one of those shots, which entered her neck area and also affected her right lung, according to the sources.
An employee of the Emova concession company also suffered a slight injury from the rubbing of another of the shots.
The officer was first assisted by SAME doctors and then was transferred by helicopter in an emergency operation to the Churruca Hospital.
Although at first the doctors managed to reverse a first cardiac arrest, Zalazar's condition was critical, since one of the bullets had affected her right lung, and while she was being operated on, after 12:30 on Tuesday she died in the operating room.
MG