“Almost 6 years following my daughter’s femicide, following so much suffering, so much pain, so many things that we had to face, the trial finally arrives. It was not easy to go through these years: we fell, we got up, but we knew that we had to be strong to continue asking for justice for her, something that I owed her, that I promised her”, says Valeria Contín, mother of Nayara Ibarbia (17 ), who died in a road accident in Monte Maíz in 2017 and for which her then-boyfriend is accused.
This Monday, March 27, the trial with popular juries begins in the Bell Ville Courts in which Gustavo Villarreal, 28 years old at the time of the incident, will be tried, accused of qualified homicide by the relationship and for mediating gender violence (femicide). , which provides for a single penalty, which is life imprisonment.
It all happened on the night of April 26, 2017 when Villarreal went looking for his then girlfriend, Nayara, in his Fiat Uno, following she told him that she did not want to continue the relationship.
They spent an hour driving the car through the streets of Monte Maíz when, around 10:30 p.m., the car suddenly crashed into a truck parked on Corrientes street at 1500 in the town in southern Cordoba.
As a result of the strong impact, Villarreal suffered a fractured leg and Nayara with loss of brain mass, for which she was in a coma for a week and died on May 7. He never came out of a coma, so he did not declare or express anything regarding what happened.
Hypothesis change
Villarreal spent two years charged with culpable homicide (for dangerous driving) and was free during that time. Then, as a result of the results of the first expert reports and the hypothesis held by the family constituted as complainant, the case takes a turn and changes its cover.
Nayara’s family always maintained that it was an intentional act. For this reason, they became plaintiffs in the case to provide evidence.
The investigating prosecutor Isabel Reyna accused Villarreal in 2020 of qualified homicide and in a context of gender violence.
María Eugenia Fernández, lawyer for the victim’s family indicated: “The evidence of the accidentological expertise took almost three years but they indicated that the street was illuminated, that there were no brakes or anything that indicates the presence of an event that led him to do that maneuver.”
Fernández recalled that they asked as proof that both of their cell phones be unlocked. “There they found messages that reported an unequal relationship in which he controlled Nayara in her friendship, he claimed her for alleged infidelities that were not such. There, too, he stated the day before that he ‘was afraid of taking a shit’. He exercised psychological violence towards her, ”said the lawyer.
For its part, it is expected that in the trial Villarreal’s defense will support the hypothesis of the accident.
In the Chamber of Bell Ville will be present this Monday the 8 popular jurors, the members of the court, Gustavo Garzón, Fauro Alejandro Martin and Roberto Cuoretot.
In the six years that elapsed between the event and the oral trial, three marches were held to demand justice for Nayara.
“We weren’t going to stop until this happened. A few days before the trial begins, so many things come to mind, everything we fight for. Removing everything that happened is very painful, but we are very strong and focused on justice being done, that they are going to give him a life sentence. He left everything in God’s hands,” said Valeria, Nayara’s mother.
