2023-12-18 03:15:00
Gabriela Cotich raised her brother Oscar as if he were her son since he was five years old. She thus refers to him every time she mentions him: “my son.” And she says: “My son died calling me”. It was on a dark winter night, in the sector called the second Centenario plateau, and in the context of a police operation full of questions still unanswered.
«He has blows to the head, “more than 45 blows all over the body”, says Gabriela. Indeed, in the autopsy protocol carried out on the body of Oscar Cotich (28 years old) The mere listing of the injuries takes up two pages. Among them, a fracture of the right wrist.
The autopsy was performed according to the Minnesota protocol, which is applied in cases of death in state custody. The part that was not fulfilled was the one that orders create an independent investigative commission. Cotich’s death is being investigated by the Neuquén Police, four of whose members are accused because they intervened the night of the incident.
«It is demonstrated from page one that the investigation was carried out by the Neuquén police, “It is contrary to the prevailing protocols in deaths in custody.”expresses with amazement Lorena Miani, the plaintiff lawyer who assists Gabriela Cotich.
Complaints once morest the prosecutor of the case
Miani lives in Villa La Angostura, and He settled in Neuquén for three days to see the file and meet with the prosecutor of the case, Andres Azar. But “I tried by all means to have a face-to-face meeting with him, without success,” he tells RÍO NEGRO newspaper.
Gabriela Cotich wants the prosecutor removed from the case. «For me he is on the side of the police. He did nothing, he never went to the scene. “I had to go, with the witnesses.”, he tells this newspaper. He provided a video that he filmed, in which he reconstructs what his brother suffered.
There were people who modified their testimony, because the first time they declared intimidated. “The police picked them up from their homes, walked them across the plateau” before taking them to the police station. «They told me: ‘They didn’t know if they were going to kill me’.
Among the witnesses there are minors. One was due to testify on camera Gesell on Thursday, the complainant Miani traveled especially to attend. «I don’t know if the Gesell was done or notbecause prosecutor Azar did not attend to me,” says the lawyer.
They were also kidnapped surveillance camera videosbut they did not record the entire scene.
The call to the police station
Last July 22, Oscar Cotich had gone to Centenario to look for some furniture, pay rent and meet a friend. A grinder by trade, he worked in an oil services company.. She had stopped using drugs but that night he relapsed.
After 10 p.m., the residents of Maquiao Street at the end, near the intersection with Comandante Hugo Chávez Street, They saw him walking in the middle of the night, barefoot, waving his arms. A police first sergeant who lives there called the 52nd police station. He would have said that he saw him shoot with a firearm.
“It wasn’t flashes of fire, it was the cell phone”clarifies Gabriela. A police officer who testified in the file confirms that Cotich was not armed.
Two cell phones, four police officers
Two vehicles went to the scene: a Toyota Ethios and a Toyota Hilux, with four police officers: the sub-inspector officer Lucas Fuentes; Assistant Sergeant Pablo Navarro, First Corporal Martín Jara and Agent Yanina Barrionuevo. They are all charged but are still in office. Alejandro Casas was appointed defense attorney.
Witnesses to the event told Gabriela that “my son is coming to talk to Ethios, They take his hand, hook it with the window lifter and accelerate. They make him run, they drag him. “There are the brands on the street.”
Gabriela wants them to explain why they didn’t call an ambulance. «He wasn’t doing anything, he wasn’t stealing, he wasn’t attacking anyone. Why did they have to hit him?.
To the Centenario hospital
After the beating “to reduce it”, the police handcuffed him and threw him into the bed of the truck. They describe him “in a state of exaltation.” But following a few minutes, he “stops resisting.”
The police must have realized that something serious was happening with Oscar because They didn’t take him to the police station, but to the hospital. Natalio Burd from Centenario. «Prosecutor Azar “He never took a statement from the doctors.”Gabriela protests.
A camera records the entry in a wheelchair, motionless. As soon as they stabilized him, they transferred him to Castro Rendón, where He died at 7:30 on Sunday. July 23th. «No one warned me, “I found out by chance at half past two in the followingnoon.”said his sister.
The cause of death
The autopsy indicates that “the final cause of death is an extensive hypoxic ischemic brain injury, secondary to cardiorespiratory arrest.” What has not been determined is what caused the strike..
Extensive hypoxic-ischemic brain injury occurs when the brain experiences a prolonged lack of oxygen and blood flow. This can happen following cardiac arrest, says the medical literature.
Cotich had “a healthy heart”. In his blood they found remains of cocaine and marijuanabut the relationship between this consumption and death is not reported.
«My son did not die from having consumed nor from heart failure. They killed him”says Gabriela.
Like the Robinson Gatica case
With the lawyer Lorena Miani, two experts with vast experience in cases of institutional violence entered the file, the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Oscar Pellegrini y Emma Virginia Kreimerconsulting specialist in legal medicine.
It is the same team that intervenes in the case of the death of Robinson Gatica, which occurred just a year earlier, on July 20, 2022 in Villa La Angostura, also in a context of a police operation and substance consumption. For that case there are five police officers charged.
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