José Rodríguez (30) was very close to fulfilling the dream of every working-class worker: finishing his own house made of materials, with environments so that each of his children could have their room.
It had been months since he had moved from the square ahead, from the Unión Néstor Kirchner neighborhood, in José C. Paz, and whenever he could he bought materials to continue advancing.
He, a turner by profession, was in charge of the workforce.
His wife was pregnant with their third child.
"My goal was always for my children to be comfortable. That they have what at some point in my life I did not have. If all this had not happened to me, today the house would be finished. I know that now I have the possibility of starting over. With determination and sacrifice, everything is possible," he says, 48 hours after his return home, after four years in different Buenos Aires prison units.
Jose, with his wife.
Photo Rolando Andrade Stracuzzi.
On January 24, 2019, José returned from his job at the "GMT Tornerías" factory.
He greeted his two sons and his wife.
It was 5:00 p.m. Since there were no cookies for the mate, and cigarettes, he went out to buy.
The usual kiosk was closed.
He continued walking and at the corner two men approached him (they were brothers).
One asked him for a cigarette, rudely.
"This person gets angry at my answer, he pounces on me and his partner pulls out a gun. We started to struggle and I see that the person with the gun shoots towards the floor. That's when I despaired; it was to check that it was not a replica. I thought they were going to me to kill.
I manage to get the gun out of them, they want to get it back and in another struggle the gun goes off and one of them falls,
" recalls José, in front of his wife, Cintia and two of their children, who have not let go since he recovered his freedom.
The man ran to his house.
He told everything to his wife.
Later, to his boss.
He was desperate and didn't know what to do.
She asked him to leave;
him, to surrender.
"I was eight months pregnant. I was afraid, I didn't want to be alone...", Cintia explains, as she can, and says that it hurts her to remember everything that happened.
After eight days on the run, José made a difficult decision: turn himself in.
He already knew that the wounded man had died.
But he had no idea about his brother's statement.
For this reason, he was arrested, accused of "
aggravated homicide
."
Last Wednesday, in a jury trial,
he was found "
not guilty by self-defense
" and was released after four years and two months
.
For the 12 members of the jury, Rodríguez "defended himself from an attack."
A popular jury found him "not guilty."
Photo Rolando Andrade Stracuzzi.
His employer maintained his salary and his family's social work throughout his pretrial detention.
And this Monday he is waiting for him at the factory, where he will be reinstated.
"The deceased's brother fled the scene with the weapon," explains Luba Lazarczuk, the official defender in charge of Rodríguez's defense.
"He went to look for a police niece and told her what happened. They are a conflictive family, with numerous causes. What they did was usurp houses in which another part of the family later dedicated themselves to the sale of drugs. At the trial They couldn't justify what they were doing on that corner," says the lawyer.
A "love" crime?
Based on what a police relative would have advised him, the brother of the deceased declared that José
had killed "for love"
.
"He is the lover of a person who had denounced my brother," he said.
"He invented it for a very simple reason: if the truth was known, he was going to go to jail for possession of a weapon of war and attempted murder," Lazarczuk clarifies.
Since Rodríguez did not appear, the case was opened as "
aggravated homicide
", with the sole statement of this person.
The investigation was carried out by UFI No. 23 of Malvinas Argentinas.
José entered the 1st police station.
by Jose C. Paz.
A month later, Ámbar was born.
48 hours after being discharged, Cintia and José's mother went to speak with the commissioner.
José and his companions did the same, on the other side of the fence.
They asked for an exception: permission for father and daughter to meet.
The entry of minors was prohibited.
They convinced him.
Although he put conditions: they would be seconds, and a fence in between.
"I could barely touch his fingers; the metal mesh did not allow me to kiss him. I am a serious person. But I do cry for my children. And in these years I suffered a lot. It is very difficult to spend the holidays in prison,
their
birthdays, the parties, Father's Day or Children's Day", says José, while having a juice, always with his children nearby.
"To all this, a policeman appeared to testify," adds the lawyer, who shared the defense with her colleague Viviana Fernández.
"He assured that in the framework of intelligence tasks that were not commissioned by the Prosecutor's Office, and therefore illegal, he found out that the version of the brother of the deceased was true, that of the crime by order or revenge. José had already given his version. But Justice decided to believe them."
Coincidentally, UFI 23, in charge of the "
aggravated homicide
" file, was investigating the other cause in question.
In which a woman had denounced the brothers.
"Rodríguez's salary receipts were presented, declared his employer, residents of the neighborhood, it was verified that he did not have a criminal record and that he did not know the
woman for whom he allegedly had killed
. Nobody believed him: not even the investigating prosecutor, neither the judge of Guarantees, nor the judge of the Chamber, nor the one of the Court", assures Lazarczuk.
As the months and years passed, Cintia began to work in family homes.
She had to sell the family car in order to support her three children.
"I thought that if she turned herself in, she would get out quickly," the woman resumes.
"I had that illusion. Because most of the people to whom the same thing happened to were released within days."
What happened in other similar cases?
Several examples of what Cintia raises can be cited.
They were even more violent than the episode with her husband.
Daniel "Billy" Oyarzún
, better known as "Zárate's butcher", was robbed in 2016. His store proceeds were stolen.
He then got into his car and chased after the two robbers, who fled on a motorcycle.
He caught up with one of them, ran him over, hit him against a pole and killed him.
The butcher spent a few hours in custody.
In 2018 a popular jury found him not guilty.
The title page was "
excess in self-defense
."
And at the end of last year he took office as councilor of Zárate.
Another case was that of the doctor
Lino Villar Cataldo
.
In 2016, he was leaving his office and was surprised by a thief, who hit him with a rifle butt and got into the victim's car.
The doctor killed him with four shots.
They arrested him and he was released after a few days.
For José it was the opposite.
He spent four years and two months in five Buenos Aires prisons
.
Lino Villar Cataldo, in the courts of San Martín.
"I don't want to think about why I went to jail and the same thing that happened to them didn't happen to me. I don't know. It's like now I'm free again and I want to enjoy it. My priority is to make up for lost time, to be able to take my daughter to the garden for the first time, to sleep with her. I think I was unlucky... things turned out that way. It's like fate wanted to put me in the same corner with these two people. They were the most expensive cookies and cigarettes in my life
. life...
".
Cynthia interrupts him.
With a question.
"And if he had been the other way around?" She says, answering by herself: "If he ended up dead... what would my life be like with three boys?"
This Monday José will rejoin the usual factory.
He started there in 2014. His boss, an architect, met him while working on a construction site.
And he offered her a job in what would be his next venture.
He was days away from becoming independent.
José was his first worker.
At the time he made him a construction manager.
Now they will meet again.
In the usual place, and José believes that, working, he will now be able to finish his pending goal: his own house with a room for each of his children.
EMJ
look also
He was waiting for the bus in Ciudadela, they wanted to rob him and he killed the criminal with a knife
Violent assault in a tavern in Parque Avellaneda: "The jets came from all sides"
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/AYNG6DWDB5FELDWNFBWGZRAWTA.jpg)
