Global Courant 2023-04-14 14:00:50
“Since the last jet was released, my dad has plummeted. He doesn’t want to go near the sidewalk. He lives in fear.” One of the daughters of Jorge Ríos (73), the retiree who in July 2020 killed a thief who assaulted him at his home in Quilmes Oeste, describes what her father’s days are like, anguished because three of the four members of the band are already released.
In the last few hours, an expertise was known that favored him: no shot was observed in the street where Franco “Piolo” Moreyra (26), the criminal who entered to rob three times in the same early morning, fell dead on his property in Ayolas street at 2700.
This was a key point in the accusation of the prosecutor Ariel Rivas (UFI No. 1 of Quilmes), who maintained in the instruction that the retiree finished him off in the street after shooting him in the middle of a struggle in the patio of the house.
Ríos will be subjected to a trial by juries from June 6 before the Oral Criminal Court (TOC) No. 3 of Quilmes, although his defense -in charge of the lawyers Marino Cid Aparicio, Fernando Soto and Martín Sarubbi- will return to ask for his acquittal in the coming days.
“My father is in very poor health. He is not the same. He decompensates more often, he has a very acute process of anguish. We had to put a caregiver on him,” says Gabriela Ríos (43).
Three of Moreyra’s four accomplices are free. Martín Ariel “Perro” Salto (29) was the first to leave. On October 31, he was released from Unit 24 (Florencio Varela). He had been sentenced to three years and four months in jail for “aggravated robbery”. He served two-thirds of the sentence and posted bail.
Retired Jorge Ríos suffered injuries to his arms and face during the assault at his home in Quilmes.
For the same crime, Christian Javier “Dibu” Chara (25) was also sentenced in an abbreviated trial to 3 years and 4 months; David Ezequiel Córdoba (27), at 3 years and 8 months; and Claudio Nicolás “Dwarf” or “Peque” Dahmer (29), to 3 years and 6 months, but they unified another sentence and received a total of 7 years and 6 months.
There is an approach restriction on the three released: they have to be less than 500 meters from Ríos and his family.
Córdoba was the last to leave, on December 26. Ríos found out because all the notifications arrive at his house, via judicial document. “He reads them all,” says Gabriela, who adds all the health problems Jorge is going through: “He is sad, cries a lot, heavily medicated, as if he were off, with tachycardia, arrhythmia problems, and hypertension.”
Jorge Ríios’ 9-millimeter Bersa Thunder pistol had three ammunition in the magazine and another three loose in a box.
In addition to these four convictions, there was another abbreviated trial in which two sisters of “Piolo” Moreyra were sentenced to eight months in prison for threatening los Ríos.
For Gabriela, the fact of “knowing that the jets are free” triggered Jorge, who as soon as he hears any noise or the dogs barking is alarmed and asks: “Who is it? Look at the camera.”
The place where Franco “Piolo” Moreyra fell and the retired Jorge Ríos arrived shortly after, in Quilmes Oeste.
Banishment and return home
Born on January 12, 1950 in Gilbert, a small town in Entre Ríos, Ríos grew up in Concepción del Uruguay and at the age of 20 he came to the south of Greater Buenos Aires. His wife, María Cristina Nievas, from Salta, had a degree in Nursing and died in 2013, a victim of liver cancer. Jorge suffered a heart attack and recovered.
From what happened, Ríos – father of two women and one man; grandfather of five grandchildren – is receiving psychological and psychiatric assistance. In addition, he installed security cameras in the house on Ayolas street, where he has lived since 1978 and from which he had to leave for almost a year for fear of reprisals from Moreyra’s relatives.
The house on Ayolas street, after the crime. Photo Andrés D’Elia.
In the neighborhood they have a neighborhood alarm and a WhatsApp group where everyone is permanently in communication.
“Don Jorge did not want to do what he did, he had no choice and this does not move a hair for a jet, because he does not have empathy and does not feel the pain of others, for him, despite that situation where he had to save his life and he had no choice, it was terrible,” says Soto.
Cid Aparicio, who tried several times to challenge prosecutor Ríos, comments on the latest expertise: “This is the end of the lies in the case. There was no flash in the street. Jorge did not shoot him there.”
The report was prepared by the experts of the Scientific Police, based on the five-minute filming of a security camera located meters from the retiree’s house.
Forensics graduate Héctor Daniel Fernández, an expert on behalf of the defense, stated that the result is the same as the “expertise carried out at the Institute of Criminal Investigation and Forensic Sciences of Lomas de Zamora, where the same digital evidence that is now being examined was analyzed frame by frame.
“This occurs because no shots have been fired during the observed sequence, if a firearm had been fired (…) the same video camera that captured the entire sequence with acceptable clarity would have done the same with a light-emitting element own as is a firearm with the characteristics of the one used in this case,” said the expert.
Nicolás “Peque” Dahmer (left) is part of the La Vera gang. Next to him, Fernando “Pichichu” Amaro, sentenced to 12 and a half years for the crime of Adrián Novillo in Quilmes.
It also added that “no gesture is observed on the part of the defendant grasping and firing the weapon towards the victim’s body, nor is it observed that the victim’s body has suffered any rattle or reaction movement typical of receiving shots from a firearm in the analyzed sequence”.
Ríos, who was handcuffed in a cell despite being injured in his right arm and his health problems (suffers from COPD, hypertension and heart disease, only one kidney is working and uses a cane when he has to walk more than 50 meters for a problem in the femoral artery), will go on trial for “aggravated homicide by the use of a firearm”. For this crime he could be sentenced from 10 to 25 years in prison.
The case for the crime of Moreyra was brought to trial by the Judge of Guarantees No. 2 of Quilmes, Martín Nolfi.
The retiree, with his lawyers Fernando Soto and Marino Cid Aparicio. Photo Lucia Merle
The case
It all happened between 4 and 4:50 in the morning of July 17, 2020, when five thieves – from the villa La Vera, located three blocks away – broke into Ríos’s house for the third time that same morning.
The retired blacksmith was caught dozing in the kitchen. Moreyra attacked him with a screwdriver and injured the back of his right hand, his right forearm, and his head.
“We’re going to put it on you, bald son of a bitch,” “Piolo” warned him. The victim defended himself with his 9-millimeter Bersa Thunder pistol and shot several times in the yard.
Ríos’ health problems worsened. Photo Lucia Merle.
In the images from the security cameras, it can be seen that, in the escape, Moreyra fell behind the rest of the gang because he was injured and walked with a limp until he fell around the corner.
In the same videos it can be seen that Ríos left his house armed, caught up with Moreyra and kicked him.
The defense denied that he finished him off with a shot and relied on a ballistic survey from the Lomas de Zamora Institute of Forensic Sciences, which determined that Ríos fired “at a distance of more than 50 centimeters.”
Franco “Piolo” Moreyra (26) died after being shot by a retiree who tried to rob him, in Quilmes.
The autopsy on the body of “Piolo” Moreyra indicated that he received two bullets: one in the chest and another in the abdominal region that caused his death from hypovolemic shock.
“These guys turned me into an animal overnight, because I also behaved like them,” Ríos admitted in an interview with Clarín a month after the crime and asked those who questioned his reaction: “That they put themselves in my place. That alone. And to see what happens when you feel that your life is in danger”.
EMJ
