Valentino Blas Correas was 17 years old. He lived in Villa Cabrera neighborhood and went to the San José school, in Duarte Quirós. I was in sixth year. His biography from now on is written in an abrupt and unchangeable past by a police bullet.
A prosecutor maintains that Blas was the victim of an “easy trigger” case that shakes the Cordovan people. A history of the worst of the Police that will be reconstructed here from multiple judicial sources, lawyers, the force itself and those close to the young people involved. A story in which it is still difficult to completely clear what happened in the midst of a chain of lies, cover-ups and half-truths.
On Wednesday night, Blas and three companions got together to eat some pizzas in a bar in the Center. There were three boys and a young girlfriend of one of them. The idea was to meet later at another partner’s home during the early hours of the morning. But, before, they had agreed to go find a fifth friend at his home in Parque Horizonte, in the southern part of the city.
After eating the pizzas, the four got on the Fiat Argo of one of them and faced the southern area. They looked for a companion and began their return to the Center, since the friends’ meeting was going to be held there.
He was driving a young man of just 18 years and his girlfriend was next to him. The other three 17-year-olds sat behind. Blas was left in the middle.
After traveling 500 meters along Vélez Sársfield Avenue, the person behind the wheel turned badly at the Las Flores neighborhood roundabout and returned in the opposite direction to Circunvalación Avenue. When he realized the error, at the height of the Telefe Córdoba plant, he recklessly turned “U”. This caused two motorcyclists who were going down that avenue towards the Center to reproach them, which caused a mutual exchange of insults.
But nothing happened to older people, until again at the Las Flores roundabout the motorcycle reached the Argo and the one who was accompanying him in the minor wheeled kicked a rear-view mirror of the car, which fell to the asphalt. The Argo driver stopped, the young woman sitting next to her got out and picked up the mirror.
When they started again, they continued along Vélez Sársfield and, as soon as they passed the Red Cross bridge, they spotted a police checkpoint stationed on the same avenue, at Pablo Pizzurno’s height. Two crossed mobiles were only passing through a central lane where a policeman motioned for them to stop.
The young people would later tell their families that they believed that those on the motorcycle had denounced them for the altercation.
Investigators indicate that it was actually a routine checkup that is usually stationed there, although the first police version insisted that a “lock” had been arranged to catch the Argo for an alleged complaint that is nowhere recorded.
The concrete thing is that, as soon as the police officer beckoned them to the side, believing that the occupants of the car were going to brake, the driver accelerated to escape from there. Fear of an alleged complaint by motorcyclists? Or perhaps fear of violating the quarantine? It remains unclear what prompted him to try to evade control.
The sequence that was recorded in the cameras that are already in the possession of the prosecution shows, according to the sources consulted, that at that time the police opened fire on the Argo.
In each of the parked mobiles to reduce the lanes in that control, there was a pair made up of a woman and a man. According to the records, only the males were the ones who shot. The data, which until now was not known, is revealing: it was not a persecution of the shots, but rather that foot police officers were fired next to their mobile phones, always as suspected.
Frightened, the driver of the Argo accelerated even more and turned into the Las Américas roundabout. On the contrary, he managed to cross Ambrosio Olmos and inserted himself in Obispo Trejo street. Before reaching Brazil, those behind were yelling at him to stop, that they wanted to get off.
The two young men at the ends opened the doors and told Blas to get off, too. “I can’t move, I’m hurt,” he told them. Only then, everyone in the car realized that one of the bullets that had pierced the window had hit him at the height of the shoulder blade.
The driver decided to act fast and accelerated with both back doors open and Blas sitting.
The two young men who came down would only find out that Blas had died several minutes later, when they arrived on foot at the place where they were going to meet.
The Argo driver and his girlfriend began to go down at full speed through Chacabuco, until they stopped in front of the Aconcagua clinic. There he stopped to ask for help for Blas. According to his account, they did not want to attend him, something that will also be investigated at the judicial level.
He returned to the car and tried to start in the direction of the Emergency Hospital. A police mobile blocked his way in Chacabuco and Corrientes. Blas was no longer breathing. The clock already said 0.30 this Thursday.
According to the Prosecutor of Distrtio 1 Turn 3, in charge of José Mana, there are no records of complaints against Argo in 101 or in the police frequency.
This story does not end at that time. Long minutes passed until Justice was notified of Blas’s death. The experts of the Judicial Police worked quickly in Chacabuco and Corrientes, since in reality that was not the scene of the crime. Still, Blas’s car and body had already been tampered with by police.
When they went to the Vélez Sársfied checkpoint, the experts also observed that the scene had already been altered. However, they recorded at least five police shots in the Argo: two in the rear window, two in the sheet metal and one in the trunk. There is one fact that was underlined in the expert opinion: two bullets entered through the same hole in the rear window. “This is only done by an experienced shooter,” the sources consulted confided.
Experts in Ballistics, Footprints and Traces, Photography, Forensic Medicine, Planimetry and Chemistry are still working to try to establish what happened.
One of the young men who was sitting next to Blas in the car still does not understand what happened: he discovered that one of the police shots had pierced his diver without injuring him and ended up hitting the head of one of the seats in front.
Minutes later, when the prosecution was already informed of what happened, an episode generated quite a lot of noise in Courts 2. The policemen assured that an unidentified witness had seen how from the Argo car they threw an object in the direction of Pablo Pizzurno, and when raking that area they found an old 22 revolver in a bag.
Both in Headquarters and in Courts are very suspicious of that version. They suspect a “planted” weapon. More when the one who pointed out where the weapon was was one of the police officers who at mid-morning would end up charged and detained. “A rusty revolver that was missing parts that could not be used,” was described by a senior police source.
“I totally rule out the version that the boys were armed. The weapon is undoubtedly planted,” said Julio Herrera Martínez, an attorney for one of the youth who survived the shooting.
The prosecution requested that the four young people from Argo who are now key witnesses to everything that happened were subjected to a test of dermotest to determine if they fired any weapons or not.
“The policeman who already has a gun in the glove compartment to plant it is a murderer, because he has already thought that he can kill someone without justification,” one of the sources consulted concluded severely.
The prosecution and the Police Conduct Court identified the two pairs of the patrols stationed at that checkpoint: Yamila Martínez and Lucas Gómez, and Wanda Esquivel and Javier Alarcón. First, it was evaluated to impute and arrest the four, already in a passive situation.
But the collation of security cameras tipped the scales, for now, only against men. Lucas Gómez (35) and Javier Alarcón (31) were detained minutes after 11, accused of qualified homicide aggravated by the use of a firearm. They are both corporal first and have more than eight years on the force.
Before being investigated, they reportedly tried to stop the Argo to corroborate the version of the altercation with the motorcyclists. Now, they are silent and analyze what defensive strategy they are going to follow.
To all this, in Headquarters and in the Ministry of Security they seek to measure the consequences of what happened. They know that the chronicle of what happened impacts the resolution: a young man murdered by official bullets for a traffic violation (not stopping at a checkpoint).
From the Police, the case was not disclosed in the press reports that it sends every day. Minutes before 9 o’clock, Chief Commissar Gonzalo Cumplido, head of Capital Security in the southern zone, was appointed to face the press. Then, Minister Alfonso Mosquera appeared. Both were cautious in their comments. They already knew that the arrests were imminent, since in the entire sequence there were only police bullets. Irrefutable.
A few weeks ago, when reading the sentences following the tragic shooting in Nueva Córdoba, which occurred in 2018, the judges of Chamber 8 of Crime again pointed out the same thing that the prosecutor Rubén Caro had criticized in the instruction: police malformation and poor preparation to preserve the crime scene.
Today, Mosquera reiterated what he had said when that failure was known: the blue formation will not be reviewed.
In this context of quarantine controls and an extended police position in the Cordovan territory, the crime of Blas continues to generate new questions.
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