Global Courant 2023-05-31 14:00:58
The police received information that the only fugitive from the gang that killed Lara Valentina Fernández (17) on New Year’s morning 2022, by cell phone, in Lomas de Zamora, was detained under a false name. He then began to visit the police stations in the southern area of the GBA and in the only one that he could not be allowed to see the files without a court order was in the 1st. of Avellaneda.
Leandro Nicolás Strassera (21), for whom the Buenos Aires Ministry of Security offered a reward of 5,000,000 pesos, had been there since May 11, arrested for an assault. He had given a false name and ID: he said his name was Antonio Miguel Ramos, unemployed, residing in Dock Sud.
María Laura Fernández (41), mother of the murdered teenager, found out about everything last Wednesday. She took a deep breath, because she was the last member of the group that murdered Lara with a shot to the back of the head while she was on the run.
Lara Valentina Fernández (17) was murdered to steal her cell phone in Lomas de Zamora. In her photo, she with her mother, María Laura.
On May 11, after one in the morning, a 25-year-old Paraguayan man was assaulted by at least three criminals who took his wallet and cell phone. Agents of the Naval Prefecture who were traveling in a patrol car through the area of Villa Tranquila, in Dock Sud, Avellaneda district, saw them running and caught one in the corridors of the settlement.
The young man, who had weapons, was wearing yellow shorts and a beige jacket. They transferred him to the 1st police station. de Avellaneda, where the prosecutor Alejandra Olmos Coronel (UFI No. 1) accused him of “aggravated robbery for being in a town and in a gang.”
A few days passed until, based on intelligence tasks, they managed to detect that it was Strassera. They confirmed it with their fingerprints. It was the one with the million-dollar reward for the crime of a girl that she was just beginning to live, who was going to start her last year of high school and who dreamed of being an agronomist.
The four young people who killed Lara Valentina Fernández (17) in Lomas de Zamora to steal her cell phone.
“This is a bit of a relief, a bit, not much because nothing is going to bring my daughter back to me, but hey, now behind bars it relieves me to know that she’s not going to steal from anyone else and at least she’s not going to to hurt anyone else,” Lara’s mother told Clarín.
The woman, who is a City Police officer, insisted: “Let’s not forget that there were four of them and they were all armed and they didn’t care about stealing or killing or anything, so knowing that there is one less person on the street who is going to commit crimes It’s like a bit of relief.”
Fernández regretted that the four accused of Lara’s crime are not going to be tried by juries because at least two of them have already objected.
“Obviously it doesn’t suit them because society is already so tired that we know it’s going to sentence them to the maximum, so it was obvious. Hopefully that will change at some point and give the victims a little more support. That It would be nice to at least know that you have the State, you have the support,” he completed.
The request for a million-dollar reward that had been spread to catch the only fugitive from the gang that killed Lara Valentina Fernández (17) to steal her cell phone in Lomas de Zamora.
Lara’s crime
On January 1, 2022, at six in the morning, María Laura Fernández arrived to take service at Directorio y Thompson, in Caballito, where young people usually gather to drink alcohol and celebrate the arrival of the New Year. She was the driver of the patrol car.
She had raised “Lalu”, as she called her eldest daughter (the other is Estrella, now 10 years old), because her partner left her when she got pregnant. That’s why she carried her maternal surname.
They had spent the New Year apart. The girl was with her friends and Laura went to La Matanza with her boyfriend.
At 6:30 a.m., the woman sent him a video of the boys’ party in Directorio. She the same age as Lara. She never got to see him. When she returned to the patrol car after half an hour to check the time on her cell phone, she had three missed calls: from her mother, from a neighbor, and from an unknown number.
“Look, Laura, don’t be scared, they wanted to rob Lara,” was the first thing she heard on the phone. Desperate, she begged, “Please tell me she’s okay.” But on the other side they had to tell him the truth, halfway: “Look, they shot him in the back of the head.”
The assault occurred after six in the morning in Falucho and Olmos, where the girl was with a group of 10 friends. They surprised her when she had her back turned, sending a message with the cell phone that one of the boys had lent her, because her old Samsung Galaxy J2 Prime, which was not worth 10,000 pesos and had been given to her by her mother, no longer had a battery. .
“Don’t touch me!” was the only thing she managed to shout. One of the criminals hit him in the head with a rifle butt and at the same time the shot was fired.
A few hours after the murder, Cristian “Chula” Maidana (23) was arrested. And on March 28, 2022, they caught Alan Benjamín González (22), who was working with an uncle in the Central Market. He had a cross tattooed on his face and is undocumented. He was taking refuge in his relative’s house.
“Martincito”, accused of being the author of the shot, fell on March 3 of last year, at the age of 15. He did not make the task easy for the Buenos Aires policemen who went to his mother’s house: he resisted and fired with a .38 caliber revolver. He ended up in prison and in a hospital, with three bullets in his legs.
Days later, he escaped from the La Plata juvenile institute and returned to his adventures: he robbed a woman of a car with an armed hand, had a shootout with the police and was recaptured.
The last fugitive, Leandro Strassera, spent 405 days in hiding: the lie did not go far.
“Martincito”; accused of killing Lara Valentina Fernández (17) to steal her cell phone in Lomas de Zamora.
EMJ