The extreme violence in the city of Rosario no respite. TO the more than 200 murders committed this year -70 percent of it attributed to the war of drug gangs- is added to the industry of hired assassins, threats and extortion. last saturday, a group of criminals shot the gate of a metallurgical workshop located in the southern area of the city of Santa Fe. Mauro Carnevale, one of the three owners of the factory, is still shocked by the nightmare he has been going through for several days and today he expressed his deep sadness at not understanding the reasons for the threats. “I don’t open anymore. What am I going to open? If I don’t know when I’m going to kill myself”she said through tears.
Mauro, 40, spoke this morning with Radio Miter and said that it all started days ago with himupon arrival of a note to the workshop, which was received by one of the employees. “The threat said ‘call this number’. We called thinking that he was a client, with the innocence of someone who works, and that’s when the threats began. I called but they didn’t answer me. My partner called and they attended to him. He said the three names – his, Mauro and his, another partner of his – and they told him ‘I’m going to make it short for you; If you want to work, you have to pay me six million pesos’”, recalled the businessman. And not satisfied, the aggressor went for more: “You have to pay, Otherwise I’m going to make him close the workshop and they won’t work anymore. I’m going to kill their family, look, I know where they live.”
According to Mauro’s testimony, the ordeal for him and his colleagues began last Monday. After a new threat the next day, they had no news on Wednesday. However, on Thursday another violent episode was recorded: “Two of them came to the gate on a motorcycle, they got off, I see them through the cameras and I say “don’t open”. We were working with the gate closed and they fired a shot.”
But the worst was yet to come. Last Saturday night, both Mauro and his partners began to receive threats through intimidating WhatsApp messages. “’If you want to work you will have to pay me. I already have them all booked’. And they showed us photos of the houses of the three”Mauro told during the radio report.
That same night, criminals appeared at the doors of the workshop and fired 12 shots that were recorded in an audio that a neighbor was sending. “They filled him with lead; minimum 12 leads left him at the gate”the witness of the shooting is heard saying, in a material shared by the media Rosario3. And he assured: “That is to scare because they know that there is no one, but they will see it tomorrow.”
Since the shooting attack – in which there were no injuries, and in which personnel from the 21st Police Station and later members of the Criminal Intelligence Agency intervened – Mauro and his partners did not raise the shutters of their factory once more for fear of more retaliation. “The only bad thing I did was work to buy myself something, to buy my machines. I never asked anyone for anything. I don’t live on plans or anything. I have all my effort in there. My drama will follow me all my life. I don’t know to what extent they have data from the factory, from my partners, from my family”, lamented the man. And in the same line, he underlined: “I have to escape as if I were a criminal”.
Tired of the dangerous reality that the residents of Rosario are going through, Mauro demanded immediate measures from provincial officials to stop the wave of violence in the city. “Why don’t they do something? Why do they let them have phones in jail? This is solved in a week, but here they are all involved. The police, the prosecutors, the judges. It cannot be that a guy who wants to work cannot work, “said Mauro during his story.
Finally, he suggested to the authorities that they allow the neighbors to arm themselves to fight the violent ones. “Let the million and a half inhabitants of Rosario arm themselves and confront the 100 guys who are armed. The rulers do not have enough balls to grab and say ‘they got here’“, held.
The investigation of the fact was in charge of the Regional Prosecutor’s Office 2 of Rosario.
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