Uruguayan football player Nicolás Schiappacasse was arrested in late January 2022 for carrying a firearm to a stadium near Punta del Este. He was found by a police checkpoint halfway between Montevideo and the coastal city, when he was on his way to the Uruguayan football classic Nacional against Peñarol.
On Thursday, the prosecutor in charge of the case, Ana Carolina Dean, reached an agreement with the defense, attorney Karen Pintos, after an abbreviated trial, La Diaria reported. Schiappacasse was sentenced to 14 months in prison. The two months and twelve days of actual imprisonment that had been arranged after his arrest were served and the rest of the regime will be probation. The 23-year-old will have, for now, six months of house arrest, with an authorization to train and play the games of the Uruguayan football team El Tanque Sisley.
Schiappacasse must communicate the times of his training sessions and the dates of his matches with the team. Once the months of house imprisonment have been completed, he will have to report to the police section of the established residence once a week. In addition, he is scheduled to do community work for four hours a week.
It also indicated the express prohibition of attending any sporting event, except for those in which I go as part of the squad, to play the match.
“The investigation concluded only with respect to Schiappacasse. Regarding the rest of the persons involved, it continues and has been divided between the jurisdiction of Maldonado and Montevideo under the responsibility of prosecutor Fernando Romano,” Dean, the prosecutor in the case, told Underlinado.
He said that there is progress in the investigation in terms of identified persons, but he did not give details because the case is in the “preliminary investigation” stage.
He also talked about the opportunity he gave the footballer to reach the shortened agreement. “He was an absolute primary. In many cases, he would have gone with an abbreviated probation regime. As happens on many occasions in cases of absolute primaries. Here what he was complying with was a precautionary measure because of the procedural risk of hindering the investigation and of risk to society,” the prosecutor said, adding that the player's behavior influenced what was decided.
After the hearing, the prosecutor denied that there was social harm and that the release of Schiappacasse does not mean that there is “one justice for the poor and another for the rich”.
In fact, a few days ago a similar case happened in the department of Maldonado. A 23-year-old boy, absolute primary, was arrested. He was not detained in custody, as was the case for the footballer.
The prosecutor stated that during the investigation, she found that the footballer was used by some barrabravas of Peñarol and he, in his naivety, accepted. At just 14 years old and coming from a humble family, Schiappacasse went to play in Spain. He was hired by Atlético Madrid and, prior to the incident, his record belonged to Sassuolo of Italy.
The Schiappacasse case
The footballer, a fan of Peñarol, was in pre-trial detention since January 28 after being arrested on the 26th of that month, two days earlier, on the road. That happened hours before the summer classic played by Peñarol and Nacional in Maldonado.
Schiappacasse was in the passenger seat of a car, with a man and two women, when the police found him a 9-millimeter pistol wrapped in a diver with various ammunition. Once arrested, preventive detention was determined pending trial for the purchase of stolen weapons and negotiating them with the barra brava of Peñarol. The offences for which its formalization was requested were “internal arms trafficking, reception and carrying of firearms in public places”.
When asked about the gun by police officers at the time, the player said that the gun was a delivery for the fans, to enter the stadium, but he didn't know who he should give it to.”
During this time he was imprisoned in Unidad 19 Florida prison, one of the prisons with the largest number of prisoners in the country. While there, he was visited by the Peñarol technical team, by xxplayers and by Luis Alberto Heber, Minister of the Interior, this week.
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