The criminal courts of the Roca neighborhood, in Comodoro Rivadavia, will focus the attention of the entire country this morning: starting at 11 The detention control hearing will be held against Mariela Altamirano and her partner, Michel Kevin Gonzálezdetained since Sunday night as allegedly responsible for the death of Ángel Nicolás Lópezthe 4-year-old boy who fell into a coma last Sunday at the regional hospital in the coastal city of Chubut after decompensating, apparently as a result of blows.
This is a momentous step in the case: Attorney General Facundo Oribones and Chief Prosecutor Cristian Olazábal will present the case and the evidence to support the imprisonment of the suspects before criminal judge Alejandro Solís. At that time, they will be formally charged with the crime of homicide aggravated by the bond, which has the only penalty of life imprisonment.
“We are going to go for everything, as always. My son’s death is not going to remain like this. All culprits will have to pay“, said Luis Lopezfather of the child, leaving the courtroom, accompanied by his lawyer, Roberto Castillo.
He was not referring only to his ex and the man he knew as Maicol: as the lawyer who took charge of the complaint announced, the legal offensive includes the request for impeachment against Family Judge Pablo Pérezwho signed the ruling that ordered the reconnection of Ángel with his mother (who abandoned him when he was a baby to go live in Córdoba), and the criminal complaints against psychologists and other professionals of the interdisciplinary technical team who participated in the civil file and supported the arguments for the biological mother to remain in custody of the boy, who until then saw his father’s new wife, Lorena Andrade, as his “mom.”
“Without his signature, Ángel would be among us“said the lawyer to justify his intention to promote a trial jury against Judge Pérez to evaluate his performance and, eventually, remove him from office and take away his privileges as a magistrate so that he can face an ordinary criminal process.
“They messed with the wrong person. Because just as I named my son Ángel Nicolás, Ángel is going to do justice,” said Luis López, who concluded: “As his name says, he is going to be an angel for all those children who are suffering today and no one sees him.”.
Test reading
Lawyer Castillo stated that there is abundant evidence to support the murder accusation against Altamirano and González. Specifically, he referred to an interview that the woman gave to the Chubut media. ADNSURin which “He said he monitored how Ángel was breathing, something that is not normal at four or five years old.“He suggested that he did that, perhaps, because he knew that the boy was beaten by his partner. “He doesn’t say something that happened before that. And witnesses appear to complement what is not being said publicly. It is evidence that will be read, along with the charges,” the lawyer explained to the press at the door of the courts in the Roca neighborhood of Comodoro Rivadavia.
Prosecutor Olazábal confirmed to the same media that based on the preliminary autopsy report and testimonies obtained over the weekend, it had been possible to “consolidate a firmer hypothesis about what happened”; presumably, blows that the child would have suffered between the 2nd and 5th of this month, when he arrived almost dead at the regional hospital.
In that sense, the forensic evidence was decisive in requesting the arrests. In the preliminary autopsy report, internal and external injuries were described compatible with what the representative of the Public Ministry defined as “battered child syndrome”.
One of the most chilling revelations of the autopsy was the detection of 22 internal traumas in Ángel’s head. Some of those hits would date back about ten days. However, Olazábal clarified that these are internal injuries that do not present a visible correlation with external marks. “They are all internal traumas that have no correspondence with an external injury. That is why it was difficult to establish what the production mechanism would be,” he said in dialogue with ADNSUR.
Threats to witnesses
On the other hand, the lawyer for the complaint also publicly denounced that “witnesses in the neighborhood where the murderers lived are being threatened.” And he added: “We prefer to first report it and after the prosecutor becomes aware of it, it is publicly understood. He is a person who is intimidating witnesses, because there are strange movements – to say the least, to be generous – in the neighborhood and evidently they do not want them to be evidenced.”
“What we propose to the prosecutor is that we understand that preventive detention should be issued after the charges are read and they have to wait for the trial deprived of their freedom,” said Castillo, who considered that Altamirano and González “are a risk even having a child of a few months old in the care of criminals.” He was referring to the six-month-old baby, Ángel’s half-sister and daughter of the detained couple, who yesterday was transferred to Córdoba to be in the care of her paternal grandmother.
Precisely one of the contextual aspects that influence the analysis of the case is the background of both in terms of caring for their other children and their intra-family relationships.
As reported The Voice of the InteriorGonzález – who had been a taekwondo teacher – would have been reported in Córdoba for episodes of family violence. An ex-partner accused him of having exercised physical violence against his own son, whom he also kept locked up.
That background, said Chubut investigators, could be analyzed as a probable pattern of behavior of the accused.
Possible episodes of violence by Mariela Altamirano with another of her children, some time ago, are also being investigated, according to local media.
The prosecution maintains that this type of background provides context and could serve to reconstruct the environment in which Ángel lived and establish whether he was exposed to a sustained situation of abuse. Thus, the analysis of the minor’s family and social environment becomes one of the keys to the investigation.
