Using their own phones, which they handed over with docility when they were arrested, the investigators were able to support the investigation into the death of Fernando Báez Sosa (18) with shocking images and chats, in the case of a crime, unheard of.
What was observed then in their social networks did not leave the rugbiers in a better position. This is how it became known that what happened in Villa Gesell in January 2020 was not an eventuality: it was the result of a well-oiled habitual practice. A year earlier, Lucas Pertossi (23) defined it: “Three nights in a row with pineapples. If there are no pineapples, it couldn’t have been high night hahahaha.”
If the prosecution achieved anything in the first week of the trial, in which some fifty testimonies were heard, from police officers and experts, from friends of Fernando and from strangers who had to see a sequence that still traumatizes them (they declared with their voices broken, nervous), was to consolidate the theory that the mob directed the attack on Fernando in a calculated manner.
What was not very clear, and it begins to be perceived from those statements, are the roles that each of the accused occupied in the group. But now it is now known that Máximo Thomsen (23), irrepressible that morning when he had to be taken out of the bowling alley by two patovicas, was the leader of the rugbiers when he attacked in gang mode.
The leader was identified by most of the witnesses. Easily identifiable by his shorts, his open shirt and his musculature, the boy was identified fighting on the Le Brique track with Fernando, which caused them both to be expelled. Then attacking his victim with blows, executing it with a beastly kick to the head.
But for that, he counted on the coverage of the rest of the members of the band, who cleared the way and drove away, with blows, those who tried to get close to defend Fernando.
The rower from Zárate who spent four days in prison after being accused (precisely by Thomsen), Pablo Ventura (24), recounted in his statement on the second day of the debate taking place in the Dolores Courts that in his city the defendants “they had a reputation for attacking in a group, always being the majority.” He recounted, without being able to specify who the victim was, that he saw them fight at the exit of a nightclub.
“There were always three, four or five, they were always the majority (when it came to fighting) against one or two people,” María Claudia Castro, Christian Rabaia and Emiliano Lazzari told the judges.
Some of the defendants, then, were players from the Club Náutico Arsenal de Zárate. When they were expelled after the murder in Villa Gesell, the club’s legal adviser revealed that it was not the first time “that it has come to our knowledge, not in the club but in society, that there is a beating of a minor or a person by four or five people who attack him, and it happens or not that some are the ones who are detained”.
At that time, only Ciro Pertossi (22), Luciano Pertossi (21) and Blas Cinalli (21) were partners. Thomsen had resigned earlier.
Lucas Pertossi tweeted the message of the “high night to the pineapples” after the beating that a boy received at the exit of Club Pineral, in Zárate. A boy named Joaquín ended up hospitalized; witnesses recounted that Thomsen and Lucas Pertossi had been involved. a journalist from Clarion Zárate toured then, where he collected other similar stories with the same protagonists, some of the accused.
“They go out every weekend and hit people. This has been happening since 2018 and the ones from the Pineral quilombo were responsible. There are videos and everything, but justice never did anything,” a young woman had told this newspaper after the fight in Pineral.
In the defendant’s dock, in addition to Thomsen and Lucas Pertossi, are also accused of “double aggravated homicide due to treachery and the premeditated cooperation of two or more people”, Luciano Pertossi, 21; Ciro Pertossi, 22; Ayrton Viollaz, 23; Enzo Comelli, 22; Matías Benicelli, 23, and Blas Cinalli, 21.
Beyond the roles, the identifications that the witnesses are attributing to the defendants, sometimes remembering those who pointed out in the line-up in Villa Gesell, other times pointing them out with a pointer on the LCD installed in the courtroom, for the lawyers of Graciela Sosa and Silvino Báez, the parents of the victim, “Although there is a differentiation of behavior, they were all directed towards the same objective”.
In this case, Fabián Améndola, a member of Fernando Burlando’s team, explained, the objective was “to cause Fernando’s death”, consequently, he said, “the qualification and penalty must be common to all”. The crime for which they must respond has a life sentence.
The first week of the debate passed in order and without incidents, beyond some minor crossovers between the lawyers that Judge Castro prosecuted by imposing her authority. Local jurisdiction lawyers define her as an official whose “pulse will not tremble.”
The intermission period will last until Monday morning, when doctors begin to testify, who intervened in the first moments in Fernando’s care, in the ambulance and in the hospital, then the doctor who performed the autopsy and the forensic pathologist. who was in charge of the histopathological expertise. Also some judicial officials.
It will be a week of purely technical statements, with experts who worked on the defendants’ cell phones, of those who took care of the scopometric expertise, which measured the similarity between the black Cyclone brand shoe, worn by Máximo Thomsen, and the mark that was left stamped on Fernando’s face. They will be witnesses presented by the complaint and the prosecution.
Those presented by the defense will be heard from the eleventh day, the next 16, and among others friends of the accused are announced, and mothers, those of Luciano and Ciro Pertossi, María Paula Cinalli; and from Máximo Thomsen, Rosalía Zárate; by Enzo Comelli, María Guillén, and by Ayrton Viollaz, Erika Edith Pizzatti.
The last two expected statements will be those of two young people who were arrested with the rest, Juan Pedro Guarino and Alejo Milanesi, but who were dismissed days later when their participation in the events could not be proven. They are scheduled for January 18, an extremely sad date: that day marks the third anniversary of Fernando’s murder.
Dolores. Special delivery.
GL