It was May 10. Juliana Gómez Vera (53) received a call from other neighbors to alert her of the problem. The service elevator did not work and the manager, who has been working for 13 years in the Arenales building at 1400, went down each of the ten floors to find the conflict. What he did not know at that time is that this damage would end in a beating, in a judicial investigation and with a diplomatic scandal.
That morning he arrived at the door of the third-floor apartment, where a "new" family lived for the traditional Recoleta building. The elevator locked, with the doors wide open. It was the house that Jessica Giovana Pinedo Quintero and Carlos Lawson shared with their children. He came to Buenos Aires to work at the Panamanian Embassy in Argentina as a business attaché and they had moved two months ago.
Carlos Lawson was Panama's business attaché in Argentina. Photo La Estrella de Panamá
"I knocked on the door and the couple's daughter opened. I thought he was bigger, really, but they told me he's 13. I didn't know them very well. But I did warn him that the elevator door had been left open and to be more careful because other people lived here and we all had the right to use it. It was the third time the same thing happened," he said.
That exchange, which ended in a wake-up call, led to a brutal fight.
Juliana is in charge of the building. He works in the morning, has a short break and resumes his tasks in the afternoon. This is how May 11 passed between "normal" chores.
"The next day I crossed this woman, everyone. Everyone doing their own thing. They didn't greet me, but it didn't catch my attention because there are many people who sometimes greet you and sometimes don't," Clarín told Juliana, recalling the previous one.
Juliana is afraid to leave her house after the attack by the Panamanian business attaché's wife. Photo Martín Bonetto.
It was around 17 p.m. that he saw her again. Pinedo Quintero (47) arrived in a taxi with Lawson and told her: "I was standing at the door and this lady is coming. For me I had it planned. He told me that I made a mistake in addressing his daughter because she was a minor. I replied that I didn't know he was a minor and asked, 'If he is a minor, why do you let him answer the door?' There he began to tell me some barbarities that I do not want to repeat, "Juliana reconstructs from her apartment, where she is still on leave due to the injuries she has been dragging since that fight.
"Then it was like this: she would enter the building, I was in the hall and she would yell at me again: 'Right now I'm going to go up and leave the elevator open. You're going to have to come knock on my door and you're going to see what you're going to find.' And then he just hit me, pulled my hair and hit me," the woman adds.
A series of images from security cameras were released from the episode in which the woman is seen being assaulted. They pull his hair and hit him in the face, by the push he falls to the floor between the entrance door to the building and the sidewalk of Arenales Street. Stunned, the man tries to help her get up.
"I'm getting better slowly, with kinesiology. I have a blow to my thigh, two hernias in my fifth and sixth cervical vertebra, blows to my legs up to my knee and my hand is numb. I am in rehabilitation, the traumatologist told me that my sciatic is affecting me," he reviews the injuries.
Scandal in Recoleta: the investigation
Juliana, she says, called 911 and when police arrived the couple had gone to their apartment. "He called someone and gave the phone to the policeman. After that they arranged everything, he told me that if I wanted to make the complaint I had to be arrested. 'Do you want to wake up in a dungeon?' the policeman threatened me. He made me sign the act and only then did he call the ambulance," the woman complains.
The doorwoman of a building in Recoleta was brutally assaulted by the wife of a Panamanian diplomat. Photo: Video capture.
After visiting the police station six times and contacting a lawyer, she insisted on the prosecution and was summoned to testify.
Judicial sources confirmed to Clarín that "both are accused" and that they are carrying out "measures of evidence" in the framework of a case for "reciprocal minor injuries."
"At first, one of the parties did not want to urge criminal action and then regretted it," they confided to Clarín. The two were summoned to testify and could end up in mediation if they "agree."
The manager shows on her cell phone how her left leg was left after the brutal attack. Photos Martín Bonetto.
The case was left in the hands of Sebastián Fedullo, of the City Prosecutor's Office.
Asked about this version, Juliana acknowledged that she gave "a slap to defend herself" but that she did not hit her. In the videos of the security cameras that transpired, it is not observed that Gómez Vera hits Pineda Quinteros or that the aggression is reciprocal.
"They wanted to file the case and the complaint. I never agreed to that," denounced the manager.
And he confided: "I asked for a panic button because I'm afraid of them, I don't know them, I don't know what they're capable of. I also asked for a perimeter, I feel unprotected by the authorities. If you are poor or a worker, there is no justice in this country. You don't know what it's like for me, it's a nightmare to leave my house, go down, use the elevator. I'm afraid to cross them. The psychiatrist increased my medication because I'm terrified of them."
Embassy of Panama in Argentina
Through a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Panama reported that the husband of the aggressor was removed from his position after the scandal.
The statement from the Embassy of Panama announcing the retirement of the business attaché in Argentina due to the scandal with the doorwoman of a building in Recoleta.
"This Ministry rejects any act of violence and reaffirms that the conduct of officials accredited in the Foreign Service must reflect, at all times and in each of their actions, the respect and consideration that Panama assigns to its relations with the receiving State where they are accredited," they said.
In the same sense, they put themselves at the "disposal" of Justice to investigate the facts.
The Panamanian Foreign Ministry indicated that "it has taken the decision to withdraw the diplomat accredited to the Embassy of Panama in Buenos Aires, as well as his family, given that the conditions do not exist to keep him in that headquarters."
"I want justice to be done, for prosecutors and judges to act accordingly. That it does not go unpunished, I want them to leave here so that they can return to work calmly, "closed Juliana.
MG - EMJ
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