2023-12-16 09:01:08
Everything was dyed questions. Hernán Rodrigo, too. He is a “broken” man and got tired of “life hurting so much.” He says that for a year and six months (since the day his brother died) he doesn’t know what he is. sleep a whole night. If urgent calls regarding his father’s medical problems didn’t wake him up, he was plagued by questions. “Why did he do something like that? Why such a sinister death? What was going through his head? How is he going to do something like that?” He repeats himself tirelessly.
On May 16, 2022, neurologist Melchor Rodrigo (43) died following going to dinner at the house of his patient, Felipe Pettinato (30), son of Roberto, the former Sumo saxophonist, radio and television host.
The Belgrano apartment, on the 22nd floor, finished consumed by flames: The fire destroyed everything. The place was unrecognizable. In the living room, kitchen, bathroom and balcony everything was soot.
Only a year later did the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office No. 25 charge him in the case of “fire followed by death” investigating the death of the surgeon. Pettinato was summoned for investigation and refused to testify. They processed him and now the defense appealed to the prosecution so they are waiting for the House’s resolution.
The accusation is ambiguous: for Justice it is not clear that the fire in which Melchor Rodrigo died has been intentional. In a statement published days following the accusation was made known, prosecutor Martín Mainardi clarified: “On May 16, 2022, Rodrigo was in Felipe Pettinato’s apartment, located at 2300 Aguilar Street in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Belgrano, when a fire broke out that caused his death,” he began.
Hernán Rodrigo in his house in San Isidro. He says that if Pettinato told him the truth he would respect him more. Photo: Luciano Thieberger
And he argued: “For this reason, what is being investigated is a fire followed by deathwhich covers, as criminal hypotheses, from an unintentional fire that had that consequence (the death of a person) to one that was intentionally caused and had the same consequence, or that it was an intentional death and was committed through of a fire.”
This ambiguity is torment for the victim’s family, who has been waiting for answers for a year and a half: “I don’t want Pettinato to go to prison just because he goes to prison, it’s not a whim,” he says.
“The prosecutor does not accuse him of killing him, but rather of the fire. But I do not agree, they were not two 8-year-old boys. If you, as an adult, cause a flame with a lighter, it is more than clear that my intention is to set you on fire. It would be different for you to tell me that he started messing around and set the house on fire, there was an intention to kill here, what did he think was going to happen? The result was obvious,” he speculates.
For Hernán “Pettinato will never tell the truth” and that is his greatest torment: not knowing.
“I want to know the truth, for him to tell what happened, I would respect him more, I swear. Even if it were following the conviction, let us know that it doesn’t change anything, but for him to tell me the truth. Skinny, what was going through your head to do such a thing? “Nothing? Without lies, explain to me what happened! The family has the right to know,” he will repeat over and over once more, as if in a plea.
Felipe Pettinato is being prosecuted in the case investigating the death of the neurologist in the fire. Photo: Instagram
The man, who suffered a car theft at the door of his house in Boulogne a few days ago, remembers his younger brother with love. He was the godfather of his 8-year-old son and an important figure for his parents.
“You can’t understand from this side, from a person who looks at his brother with love, you can’t understand why, What makes you do such a thing?. What was your madness or your great pain, whatever you may have felt to do such an animal thing. I have that last question to do before I die: tell me why, why did you do that,” he insists.
The family tragedy
Hernán Rodrigo’s mother died when he was 7 years old. The oldest brother in the family, too, when he was 14. And five days ago his father, Tomás Rodrigo, died, drowning in pain over the loss of his youngest son.
Tomás Melchor Rodrigo was an economist. He lived in the United States and re-married with Melchor’s mother, Beatriz, with whom they had two children. A month and a half following the death of his youngest son, he suffered a stroke from which he might not recover.
“It was going in and out of the hospital, the phone ringing at any time because he had fallen, because he had decompensated,” Hernán recalls, who shared the attention between his father and his brothers.
Felipe Pettinato’s apartment following the fire.
About five months ago he had a second episode and he was never the same once more. “My dad was a big man but he was a genius, he drove, he went, he came, he traveled. He did everything, he was splendid. My brother’s obsession was his parents, he lived with them, and they were fine. But this is something I come from asking from the first day: my father might die without knowing what happened to his son, that’s why he demanded speed from the investigators. And it happened. He died without having justice,” he lamented.
Hernán still hears him complaining while lying in bed. He wakes up at night and those requests resonate. Also the scenes in which he cried asking for Melchior. Finally Tomás Rodrigo died without knowing.
The investigation
Around 11:30 p.m. a fire broke out inside the apartment. Pettinato went out into the hallway and asked for help to pay off the flames and to rescue his friend, Mainardi reconstructed in the indictment.
After putting out the fire, the firefighters noticed that in the living room of Pettinato’s apartment there was the lifeless body of Rodrigo, who had burns on the lower part of his legs.
The autopsy performed by the Forensic Medical Corps determined that the cause of death was the result of “critical burns of 90% of the body surface,” and “congestion, edema and pulmonary hemorrhage.”
The toxicological reports carried out revealed that on the day of the incident, the victim had ingested benzodiazepines and methylphenidate, drugs whose consumption in high doses can cause depression of the central nervous system. These data, added to the effects of carbon monoxide and hypoxia generated by the fire and smoke inhalation with different substances, led the medical experts to conclude that a fire might have occurred. sum of effects that caused respiratory depression, cardiac toxicity and might have caused sudden death at the start of the fire.
For the prosecution, these reports and the other evidence allowed us to conclude that the drugs in Rodrigo’s body would have generated “a state of unconsciousness that would have deprived of any possibility of reacting facing the first contact with the flames”.
“Although there is no doubt that (Pettinato) insisted that they help his friend, we must conclude that there is no evidence that indicates that he did anything at the start of the fire to try to rescue Melchor Rodrigo from a fire that he himself created,” the prosecution indicated in its indictment.
In addition, the prosecutor announced that “the investigation will be deepened into the falsification of prescriptions” by Pettinato with which he acquired medications, since it is believed that for this he used prescription books from a clinic and the seal of a former doctor of his. , and that he would then have completed the prescription with his signature.
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