The facts that are known about the crime of Federico Martín Aramburu, the former Los Pumas player killed in Paris

What seemed like a quiet evening with his friends ended in fatality. Federico Martín Aramburu, a former Argentine rugby player and member of that famous Los Pumas generation that won the bronze medal at the 2007 World Cup, was killed early Saturday after being involved in a confusing fight in a bar in Paris. His death has generated great shock in the world of rugby and mainly in France, where research is already progressing into around the fact.

On Friday night, Aramburu, 42, began with a reunion with several friends in a famous Argentinian place in District 6 of the French capital, more precisely in the restaurant 'Volver' owned by Carlos Muguruza and is located in the Mabillon neighborhood of Boulevard Saint-Germain. There he went to lunch with Marcelo Bosch, José Orengo and Octavio Bartolucci, his former teammates on the Argentine rugby team. They hadn't seen each other for years and shared a dinner where they caught up.

Around 1 am on Saturday, after they finished eating, they moved to a bar where Federico Martín Aramburu was going to meet his friend Shaun Hegarty, former teammate at Biarritz Olympique and currently his partner in the travel company 'Esprit Basque'. They had planned to attend this Saturday's Six Nations Tournament match between France and England at the legendary Stade de France.

“We ate at a restaurant. All 10 points. Telling us about life, children, work. When we finished eating we went somewhere else. Then Josi and I went to sleep and he stayed that he had to wait for a partner,” warned Bartolucci, who also said he retired around 2 in the morning.

According to L'Equipe, the first elements of the investigation entrusted to the Paris crime brigade suggest that on the terrace of the night establishment called Le Mabillon an altercation between three people — allegedly two men and one woman — and Aramburu had broken out. That incident was quickly dispelled. While there are no great details of the fight, the aforementioned French newspaper reported that a witness told that a man exhibited a police bracelet and then put it in his pocket in the middle of the riots.

It was already around 6:15am when Martín Aramburu decided to return to Hotel De Buci, located just 200 meters from the bar. As he began his journey to the place where he was staying, two men appeared surprisingly from a car and shot him several times. It was “between five and six” shots, first from the vehicle and then one of them moved towards Aramburu. The Sudouest portal detailed that they were on board a green Jeep driven by a third person, who would be the woman involved in the fight.

The French media reported that Federico Martín Aramburu was seriously injured in the back and leg, and that it was identified that he no longer had vital signs in front of a shoe store on that same block. The Paris Prosecutor's Office went to the scene and opened an investigation for “murder”. According to several sources consulted by L'Equipe, one of the alleged shooters has been identified.

Aramburu, who lived in the Basque Country and was scheduled to travel to Argentina on Monday, could not be revived by the emergency team who arrived shortly after. The newspaper Le Parisien specified that the victim received “four bullet wounds”. One projectile hit his spine, another on his neck, a third one entered the thigh of his right leg, and the fourth one went through his torso on the left side.

“The police stayed on the boulevard for several hours. There were many of them and they installed a tarpaulin on the asphalt to hide the body,” a young witness told the Parisian newspaper. The police have recovered the images from the security camera of the bar and shops in that area, so it is expected that there will be more details that will identify the murderers of a Federico Martín Aramburu who wore the Los Pumas shirt 22 times and played in French rugby between 2004 and 2010, winning twice ( 2005 and 2006).

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