Three criminals between the ages of 21 and 29 were arrested by the Buenos Aires Police after they staged a fierce crime raid in La Matanza, in which they murdered a man, stole a cell phone and a car and assaulted a policeman with whom they were shot.
It all started this Sunday afternoon, when the three suspects who were driving through the town of González Catán aboard a Ford EcoSport van intercepted a person walking down the street to steal his cell phone. That fact, the first of the four that they committed in total within an hour, would be the slightest of all.
Shortly after the first assault, they continued to tour the area and surprised their next victim, a police officer from La Matanza, while he waited, in civilian clothes, for the collective at the crossroads of Simón Pérez and Solom streets. While threatening him with a gun, the assailants stole a bag in which he was wearing his uniform, bulletproof vest and cell phone.
At that time, according to police sources, the officer made himself known as a policeman and pointed his statutory weapon at them, so an exchange of fire began in which the criminals escaped, although one of them was injured.
When the cash returned to his home to notify 911, the staff of the 2nd Police Station in González Catán had already received another alert about an event that occurred at the junction of José Hernández and Barrientos streets, about 10 blocks from the site of the previous assault. There, a man had been found injured by a shot in the head inside his white Peugeot Partner van, stopped next to an abandoned EcoSport.
Minutes later it was found that the partner driver, identified as Omar Francisco Gallardo, 31, was dead inside the vehicle, which in turn had hit a light pole.
As the investigators later rebuilt, the criminals, who had come from assaulting cash, had stopped to change a tire on EcoSport when they ran into the man aboard the Partner, who was attacked to steal it. The man would have resisted the robbery and, as a result, was killed by criminals.
As they failed to get hold of the van, the criminals finally assaulted the driver of a light blue Renault 12 passing through the area, with whom they finally fled.
The officers of the Buenos Aires Police in Catán and the personnel of the South Substation of La Matanza mounted at that time a deadbolt operation that ended with the capture of the three assailants.
Lautaro Daniel Paz, 21, and Ezequiel Matías Benitez, 29, both residing in the town of Rafael Castillo, were arrested as were their third accomplice, whose identity did not transcend, who was taken to the Simplemente Evita hospital with one shot in the abdomen and another in the right arm as a result of the shooting with the policeman.
The three criminals carried a .38 caliber revolver, a 9-millimeter Bersa Thunder pistol with filed numbering and two magazines. Police also seized a bulletproof vest, a full police uniform and four cell phones, according to the subsequent report accessed by Infobae.
The investigation of the incident was now in the hands of the prosecutor Gastón Dupláa, in charge of the UFI of Homicide of La Matanza, which ordered that the investigations be carried out by the National Gendarmerie. In the Peugeot Partner where the Gallardo body was found, which had an entrance hole in the left area of the head and exit in the right eyebrow, a 9-millimeter sheath was seized.
In addition, dermotest analyses were carried out on the three suspects and the police involved in the armed conflict, and prosecutor Duplaá ordered that the autopsy be carried out this Monday at the judicial morgue in Lomas de Zamora
Now the criminals will have to answer in a criminal case qualified as aggravated robbery with a firearm in real competition in the first act; robbery with a firearm and attempted homicide criminis cause for the episode that took the policeman as a victim, and attempted aggravated robbery and homicide criminis cause, for the crime of Gallardo.
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