The government of Rio Negro managed to avoid a civil lawsuit by a citizen of Cipolletti who in 2014 suffered a rubber bullet wound and almost lost an arm. After several years of litigating in civil law justice separated the responsibilities of the provincial State because the presentation was made outside the times established by the code.
Although the State is responsible because the perpetrator of the shot was a police officer, the cause prescribed and for this reason the sentence fell exclusively against former police agent Nicolás Armando Apeleo.
He must pay about 2.5 million pesos to the victim for the injuries he caused. As can be seen from the sentence, he was hospitalized for several days and he had to undergo a series of operations to save his arm.
In the allegations, the legal advisors argued that the lawsuit was filed after the deadline, two years at the time, and that for this reason they had no responsibility towards the citizen, despite the fact that In the criminal court, the policeman was convicted.
It is not the first time that the provincial government manages to avoid a criminal lawsuit for police crimes. There are precedents in Cipolletti, one of the cities with the highest rate of police violence in Río Negro.
Without going further, between January 9 and 10 Jorge Gatica died at Police Station 45 after suffering torture. There are five police officers accused of the act, three of them with pretrial detention and two with house arrest.
Last year Cristian Caumillan was sentenced to 9 years in prison for torturing and sexually abusing a young man in a police operation, in May 2020.
In this case, Apeleo was sentenced for harassment in an operation that took place on the night of November 1, 2014. The ruling shows that there was a scene of violence between several neighbors and that in this context the policeman fired a series of shots “in in order to disperse the tumult”.
The pellets hit the hand, arm and abdomen of the victim who she was taken to the local hospital where he remained hospitalized for several days. They performed various operations on him in order to prevent him from losing his arm.
Both for the defense of the accused and for the advisors of the provincial government, the agent acted in the terms established by the protocol. Even in the civil trial, the convicted person said that it was “a misfortune of physics.”
He explained that he fired at the ground, but the bullet ricocheted and hit the man who was “injured because he was in the disturbances throwing stones.” They also reported that another agent was injured by a stone.
On February 15, Judge Soleda Peruzzi upheld the claim and ordered Apeleo to pay the sum of $2,449,176 “plus the corresponding interest from the signing of the present and until its effective payment according to the rate of the legal doctrine”. She also released the provincial state from responsibilities.
Under the code, the plaintiff has up to two years to file the lawsuit and it was filed on October 26, 2017, almost three years later. Although the accusers tried in their allegations to justify the delay as a consequence of the legal proceedings, the magistrate understood that the presentation was out of term.
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