The mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, gave details this Saturday of the four people who appeared dead inside a Toyota truck.
He did so following presiding over an extraordinary security council where the authorities gave him the complete tracking of the vehicle where the victims appeared.
The president reported that on Thursday, August 18 at 10:48 in the morning, the truck left Bogotá through the Andes toll, apparently with four people on board. At 3:00 in the followingnoon of that same day, he returned to the country’s capital. Later, around 3:30, the car was left abandoned on the North Highway.
According to the president, “they went for former police officer Juan Carlos Useche,” and the woman who was in the vehicle, identified as Leidy Alejandra Betancourt, allegedly had a relationship with him.
This former police officer was the first confirmed victim of the crime. It was learned that he was linked to the Police for several years; however, he left in the midst of controversy for misconduct. He was later imprisoned in La Picota prison for conspiracy to commit a crime.
According to the president of the capital, The other two men who were with Useche were allegedly his escorts, Leonardo Sanabria, born in Colombia, and Eiler José Perozo, of Venezuelan origin.
The latter, According to the mayor, he had a record for possession of weapons and had already been prosecuted.
Similarly, he said that Betancourt allegedly had a relationship with Useche, “I was with him at that time and unfortunatelye she also ends up murdered”. Likewise, he revealed that the woman had no criminal record.
Claudia López reported that whoever murdered these people was exclusively following Juan Carlos Useche, a former police officer with a shady past. “A Colombian citizen retired from the Police since 2006 being a patrolman in Cali. Since then, he had several records for conspiracy to commit crimes linked to drug trafficking activities, he was imprisoned twice, he had a life in crime for many years. The Prosecutor’s Office and the Police have established that he was still involved in criminal activities of drug trafficking and money laundering, “said the president.
For this, presumably, “in a macabre and criminal reckoning he ends up murdered,” he said.
This was the investigation for the massacre in Bogotá
The scene of the massacre that occurred in Bogotá was horrifying. In the heart of the North Highway, where thousands of Bogota citizens pass day following day, four young people lay inside a van. Nobody had noticed during the hours that the vehicle was parked there, for no apparent reason, in the middle of the night. However, someone warned that a truck of that size, lying on the street, might only be a sign to be suspicious.
There emerged the first sign of one of the most heinous crimes seen in the capital: an unsuspecting call to line 123. After the report of the vehicle left on the road, the authorities sent the first investigators, who thought it was a car with explosives The criminalistics team arrived dressed in white, from head to toe, and accompanied by expert German shepherd dogs. Due to the time (it was ten o’clock at night) and due to the fact that the truck was armored, the experts took more than three hours to determine that this threat did not exist in the vehicle.
However, when they finally opened the truck, already sure that it was not a car bomb, they found a chilling image in the trunk. Four corpses, three men and one woman, were found one following another. One of them with a black bag wrapped around his head. And the others, with their faces and heads impacted by the shots.
Due to the strict protocols that exist for this type of case, which prevent the chains of custody of a criminal investigation from being broken, nobody touched them. They contacted the Judicial Police and criminalistics. The first thing that caught our attention is that none of them had documents, jewelry, watches, money or a wallet. But there are very strong signs that with his death what was wanted was to send a message. A revenge? A brawl between gangs? The intent of a warning was obvious.
Due to the bag on the head, it was initially thought that those responsible were members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang. They are bloodthirsty criminals who terrorize the south of the city and are considered responsible for 17 murders, in which the victims were wrapped in black bags. The violence they exercise once morest their victims is extreme: they usually film their murders and the definitive stamp is to leave the corpses complete in plastic. Their order has been to eliminate competition from thugs and take over Bogotá as the site of their misdeeds. On Friday morning, Colonel Herbert Benavides, commander in charge of the Bogota Metropolitan Police, explained that the strongest hypothesis at hand, at the moment, was a “settling of scores” by micro-trafficking groups.
However, in a matter of hours, that hypothesis and that group, the Aragua Train, began to be discarded. Many elements were added so that it was quickly identified that the crime was framed in a harsher context than initially thought. The first thing that was known was the name of the owner of the vehicle, a xerus gray Toyota truck, with CJE 835 plates: Carlos Mauricio Navarro.
The president reiterated the support of the District Administration for the actions that the police and judicial authorities took from the outset to clarify the facts and reiterated the reward of up to 20 million to whoever delivers information that allows identifying and locating the criminals who would be behind this collective homicide.
For his part, the deputy commander of the Bogotá Metropolitan Police, Colonel Herbert Benavides, said that “From the moment the incident was known, an inter-institutional team was arranged between the Prosecutor’s Office and the National Police, made up of 100 investigators from both the Judicial Police and Intelligence. The reward of 20 million pesos continues to find the perpetrators of this crime.
This was the tour of the van
Useche bought the vehicle in March, according to López. Meanwhile, it is known that the route of the car was as follows: it heads towards the outskirts of Bogotá, through the Andes toll, on the Autonorte, around 10:45 am, but it is unknown which of the two possible routes it re-entered. the capital.
It is not until 3:45 pm on that same Thursday, August 18, that the vehicle is abandoned on the road with the four bodies that were lying inside. Then, it is reported by a call made to the 123 emergency line.
“These are homicides directly related to the criminal activity of drug trafficking, presumably money laundering of Mr. Useche. They are due to a dispute between criminal structures”, for which the Police and the Prosecutor’s Office continue to investigate, said the mayor.
Likewise, the president said that the people were killed with grace shots outside of Bogotá, for which the lifeless bodies of the 4 victims entered the city, to later be left abandoned in the car.