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To over two years of Jorge Gómez’s crime for the deadly kick of the Buenos Aires police officer Esteban Ramírez, the Prosecutor’s Office asked to three other officers accused of covering up the murder. After a dispute over the jurisdiction of the case, the cause – which runs parallel to the one that judges Ramírez– again fell to the Prosecutor’s Office No. 32 and its head, Leonel Gómez Barbella, accuses the officers of the Neighborhood Police Station 3B, Héctor Febula, Lorena Luna and Sergio Sendra, of “having acted in the joint and coordinated“in the cover-up of the crime. Before the security camera video was released showing that Ramírez kicks the 41-year-old man directly without defense, the policemen had reported to SAME that when trying to flee the victim fell alone and hit the asphalt by a “alcohol poisoning“. The doctor who came to the aid of Gómez declared that she found him face down and with the pants down, in a different position than the one seen in the video. Just two hours after the fact, and when the death was confirmed, the troops gave an intervention to the Justice with the false version that Gómez had attacked Ramírez with a knife.
“Aggravated concealment, aggravated false testimony, and ideological falsehood“Are the three provisional qualifications with which Gómez Barbella accuses the three agents. The investigation had been stop in 2020 due to a conflict of jurisdiction. After the prosecutor Ana Yacobucci, then in charge of the 32nd Prosecutor’s Office, brought to trial the case in which Ramírez is accused of “homicide pre-intentional” –the Gómez’s family asks that he be tried for “murder with eventual aggravated intent” -, asked Court No. 8 to extract testimony to discuss possible cover-up. Then the court ordered to circumvent the cause and an inexplicable course of intervening courts began that led to the conflict of jurisdiction. It was not until 2021 that the Chamber Justice ordered what was logical: that the cause return to the same Court and to the same Prosecutor’s Office that investigated the homicide.
After making contact with the evidence and the testimonies, Gómez Barbella – who replaced Yacobucci after she left the Prosecutor’s Office– asked the judge Yamile Bernán the investigation of the three policemen. “They avoided reporting the event immediately to the judicial authorities, notifying them belatedly and reporting a previous attack by Gómez carrying the knife on Ramirez, a circumstance that did not occur and that it placed him in a better position in the face of what happened, “accuses the prosecutor.
According to the reconstruction of the events, around 7.30 on August 19, 2019 a neighbor called 911 denouncing that a man interrupted the traffic in Carlos Calvo at 2600 and that he was carrying a knife. At 7.39, the first police modulation occurs in which support is requested and, two minutes later, the ambulance is requested for “an individual convulsing on the public highway“. In the investigation, officers Luna and Sendra, who were at the scene, They declared that Gómez was conscious at the time of calling the ambulance and that they did not believe that there was danger of death. Instead, the SAME doctor who arrived at the scene assured that found him already unconscious, with the skull fracture caused by hitting the asphalt, and that he requested the immediate transfer when he saw that he was having a cardiorespiratory arrest.
The doctor also stated that she found Gómez face down with the arms “above the head, the palms of the hands resting on the floor, pants down to knee height and no underpants“. In the video it is clearly observed that the man did not stay in that position After the fall, neither did his pants hang around his knees. The doctor assured that the order to go to the place was for “alcohol poisoning on public roads”. In addition, he argued that the police officers told him that Gómez “was standing at the scene when the police intervened and that he fell to the floor trying to flee“At no time did they mention that he had been beaten.
The “event” opened after the events was closed by officers at 8:26 a.m. and reopened at 10:11 a.m.. In the middle, the third accused by Gómez Barbella, the Chief Inspector Febula, who was in charge of Judicial Service of Police Station 3B. As reconstructed in the investigation, it was he who, at 9:20 that day, almost two hours after the fact and after verifying that Gómez had died, he gave an intervention to the Justice. Febula first called the Prosecutor’s Office to report that a man had died “after being pushed by a police officer when he tried to arrest him, since he was drunk and with a knife“Then, from the Prosecutor’s Office they told him that he had to give intervention to the Court, since there was an identified policeman with possible responsibility for the facts.
The call to court it just arrived half an hour later, at 9.50. There, the inspector notified a “death“and repeated that Gómez had pounced on the officer with a knife. The Court ran the investigation to the City Police and ordered the intervention of the Gendarmerie, something that the Buenos Aires force itself should have done in the first instance. At 10.11 am, upon reopening the “event”, the agents record for the first time that Gómez “was pouncing on police personnel with a knife, is reduced and hits the head hard against the asphalt ”. According to the prosecutor, in that period the agents did not prepare the minutes as appropriate, they did not look for witnesses that they gave an account of what happened and “did not protect the traces and the existing evidence.”
The cause for the crime of Gómez was put on trial in 2020 but the debate has not yet developed. Prosecutor Yacobucci accused Ramírez of “pre-intentional homicide,” a releasable crime. The complaint, on the other hand, asks that he be tried for “murder with eventual intent, aggravated by being a member of the security forces “, since he assures that the officer must have figured out that his kick could be fatal. This crime provides for the penalty of life imprisonment. The trial was due to start last September, but was postponed after the death of Gómez’s brother, who was in charge of the complaint. While the Justice decides if his other brother is accepted as a plaintiff, Ramírez awaits the process in freedom.