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The prosecutor in the case investigating the murder, committed on Tuesday night, of the police officer who was guarding the Provincial Hospital guard, thinks that the group of four criminals who participated in the incident were trying to rescue Gabriel Lencina, a detainee housed in Piñero, who was being treated for tuberculosis in that health center, and that he was soon going to be removed by a Penitentiary Service truck. But in the face of resistance from one or more of the prison guards, they shot at least nine times as they ran down Zeballos Street. While he was fleeing, one of them suddenly crossed paths with Sub-Inspector Leoncio Bermúdez, who did not manage to defend himself, and collapsed with the first shot to his head. Justice is also investigating whether during their escape they also shot at a metal car used as a police detachment, parked on Zeballos Street, and in which four bullet holes were found, and where the murdered police officer’s daughter, who was only eight years old, was found.
Yesterday morning, a raid on the cell of someone close to Lencina found drugs and cell phones. The prosecutor in the case Gisela Paolicelli, from the Homicide Unit, reported yesterday that the criminals struggled with two Penitentiary Service agents who were guarding the prisoner and that one of them was robbed of his service weapon. And she confessed that she was leaning toward the hypothesis that they wanted to rescue him, because they had the opportunity to shoot the detainee, they had him in front of them.” However, they did not do it.
In the line of investigation, the prosecutor also said that she will try to establish “how the information that the prisoner was there was leaked. The Penitentiary Service is naturally being investigated because they were in charge of the custody of the detainee. Telephones were seized. There were two in charge from custody, plus three in the transport vehicle. Only one of them had his weapon removed,” he indicated.
The mechanics are still not entirely clear. Until now, the criminals entered armed and went after the two Penitentiary Service agents who were guarding Lencina, with one of whom they struggled, hit him in the head with a rifle butt and stole his service weapon. On their way out they ran into Leoncio Bermúdez.
The prosecutor indicated that in the early hours of yesterday the Criminal Investigation Agency raided pavilion 9 where Lencina is housed, along with 90 other inmates. Lautaro Román Núñez, one of her accomplices, lives in one of the 40 cells. The procedure had been requested by the prosecutor of the Organized Crime and Complex Crimes Agency Luis Schiappa Pietra. The request, given data that allowed us to presume an escape attempt, predates the episode in which, during the night of this Tuesday, police officer Bermúdez was murdered. However, it contributes elements to this investigation by Paolicelli.
Núñez is accused of the murder of Laureano Cardozo, while he was out walking his family’s dog in Villa Flammarion, and for two shootings: against the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC) and a police detachment in Tablada in the who threw posters referring to prisoners and threats against prosecutor Matías Edery.
It should be remembered that Lencina is serving a sentence of 22 years and 2 months in Piñero prison for two homicides and an attempted homicide and is accused of being a member of the Hernán “Lichi” Romero gang, also detained and head of a drug gang with base in Nuevo Alberdi. He is 29 years old and according to the Penitentiary Service he has “exemplary” behavior in prison and “good conduct.” He was deprived of his freedom to serve his long sentence in September 2013, and spent time in several places of detention. He still has a long way to go: his release, if there is no sentence reduction, will be on November 9, 2035, but he can request parole in June 2028.
His boss in the criminal world is Hernán “Lichi” Romero, who is serving a sentence as the leader of an illicit association and who is facing another request for 28 years in prison for the kidnapping and attempted murder of a man who was captured at the door. from his house and left for dead after keeping him captive and shooting him on a road. According to the accusation, “Lichi” gave the orders from his cell, and by video call.
Lencina was convicted as the instigator of the murder of Jorge Nicolás José in the early hours of February 23, 2020. Prosecutors proved that he was the one who called another person, also convicted – Gastón Fabián Núñez – to coordinate a meeting with the victim in Génova and Colombres. On that corner they shot him at least five times from a car. Four bullets hit him in his body, one of them in his chest, and he died at the scene. Lencina was the instigator of the crime, and for it he accepted three years ago a sentence of 11 and a half years in prison that was combined with a previous one to add up to the 22 years and two months he served. The plot of that murder had as its background a drug debt.
The post first appeared on www.pagina12.com.ar
