Germán Pardo (50
) settled in 2021 with his wife and three children in Weston, state of Florida, in the United States. With a degree in Systems, he took over his consulting firm and started an electronic device repair business. It was uprooting him, leaving his parents in that triangle that joins three towns (Ramos Mejía, Lomas del Mirador and Ciudadela), meters from General Paz and the border with the City of Buenos Aires.
November 18, 2023 was a Saturday. In Argentina, there were hours left before the runoff that would end up consecrating Javier Milei as president. At noon here, Germán was traveling by car towards the coast of the United States. His sister-in-law had arrived to visit with a niece and they were all spending a vacation together.
Halfway through the journey,
his brother Leandro (44)
called him on the phone. The driver's wife heard the painful news and asked him to get off the highway to tell her the message. She barely stopped, when she received those words that made her blood run cold: "They killed your dad to steal his car."
The family returned home. Germán got a flight and traveled that same Saturday.
Leandro, meanwhile, was in the middle of shock. They had summoned him to the police station, but no one informed him about his father,
Rafael Indalecio Pardo (83)
, a merchant who had to stop working two years earlier because his children, who had been in love for more than five decades, asked him to. of her life, Ana María Arneri (79).
Tired of not receiving answers, Leandro arrived at 400 Carlos Pellegrini Street, where there was a crowd of people and several patrol cars. "
What happened?
" he asked. "
They killed a person who tried to steal his car
," he heard. The man wanted to know more, predicting the worst: "
Was the car white?
" The "
yes
" devastated him. The "
white car
" was his father's Peugeot 208.
Victim of four motorcycle jets, "Rafa" was dead sitting in the driver's seat, with his body leaning towards the passenger seat and with his feet resting on the floor. He had been
hit in the head (a rifle butt) and shot in the abdomen
.
The retiree had difficulty walking due to a problem in his left leg and used a cane. Although he was big, no one understands why he was murdered. He was an 83-year-old man with a pacemaker. Minutes before,
he had gone out to buy medicines from a pharmacy
.
As there used to be problems in getting all the medicines through PAMI, I had to complete a patient journey through different businesses. That's why he left in his car, which he only used to drive around a few streets in the neighborhood. Inside 208 they found
the note in which he crossed out with a pen the remedies that he was buying
.
"Dad stayed a few more minutes in the car crossing out what he had achieved. If he had started right away, perhaps this would not have happened,"
his youngest son, who is the Human Resources manager of a company in Greater Buenos Aires, tells
Clarín
today. .
Two of the four suspects were arrested a few days later in the investigation that, at first, was led by prosecutor Claudio Fornaro (La Matanza Homicides). They are
Lautaro Tejerina (19) and Leandro Yardín (22)
.
The following month another,
16-year-old
, fell, so the case, titled "
homicide on the occasion of robbery
", became the responsibility of Pablo Insúa (UFI No. 1 of the Juvenile Criminal Responsibility Jurisdiction).
The last member of the gang was captured last Sunday, after another shocking murder. His name is
Yoel Taiel Tambussi (19) and he is accused of having killed
Gianfranco Di Luciano (20)
, a boy from Parque Patricios, with a bullet in the forehead
, after an argument at Teatro Woodstock, a bowling alley in San Justo.
"How could it be that he was a fugitive for five months? Could it be that he had protection?" ask those who know the file. It is the same question that the parents of "El Colo" are now asking themselves.
Who was Rafael Indalecio Pardo
"Rafa" was a merchant all his life. He had his clothing store in Ciudadela, two blocks from the station. Ana María seconded him.
In 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic began to subside, his children convinced him. "
Dad, don't work anymore
," they begged him.
He had five grandchildren (three on Germán's side, two on Leandro's side). His wife is now suffering from depression. They were more than 55 years together. On October 17th he turns 80, the first birthday without "Rafa" by his side.
"This disrupted the entire family. My father did everything: pay the bills, buy the medicines, fix the house. He was my mother's partner," Germán laments from the US and says that Rafael "loved it." "I knew half of Ciudadela."
Almost 15 kilometers from where his father was murdered, on January 25, they killed a woman he had met when he worked at Arcos Dorados, the company that owns McDonald's.
María Lucrecia Arias (51)
was returning to her house in Castelar, Morón district, with her 17-year-old daughter, when they tried to steal her Volkswagen Suran.
The victim's seat belt became stuck and he was unable to get out immediately. The ruthless reaction of the criminals was lethal: a bullet to the head.
The black Peugeot 2008 in which the thieves were traveling was found in the area of the Ejercito de los Andes neighborhood, known as "Fuerte Apache", of Ciudadela. Two suspects are detained for this crime. One of them just fell this week. He's 19 years old.
EMJ