Global Courant
The scene takes place in the village of Paraguay in 1536. Carolina Zambrano, widow of federal police officer Juan Pablo Roldán (33), cries in despair as she leaves the final hearing in the trial of Jorge Monforte (71), psychiatrist of her husband’s murderer. The specialist has just been acquitted.
“We are two destroyed families. The doctor is guilty. The evidence was there,” says the woman, who is Colombian. He added: “We will appeal and continue to seek justice. My son is 7 years old. Soon I’ll have to look him in the eyes and explain to him that I couldn’t find justice for him.” Father’s death, that I didn’t achieve it. No “I want this to happen.”
On Monday, September 28, 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, Rodrigo Roza (51), a patient with persistent paranoid schizophrenia, arrived screaming on Figueroa Alcorta Avenue, a few meters from Malba. After throwing a dead bird that he kept in a backpack and shouting phrases about God, the sun and the universe, he attacked Roldán, a member of the Mounted Division of the Argentine Federal Police (PFA), with four stab wounds and killed him Wounds. The crime occurred at 4 p.m. As Roldán defended himself, he managed to fire his weapon. Roza was shot three times and also died a day later.
The trial was conducted by Oral Criminal Court (TOC) 28. Monforte was charged with “culpable homicide (involves a sentence of 1 to 5 years),” for Roldán’s crimes, and with “abandonment of a person followed by killing (involves a sentence of 5 to 15 years)” for his patient.
Juan Roza, the murderer’s brother, hugs Carolina, the widow. He comforts her. He then talks to Clarín and explains what it’s like to live with a brother who suffers from constant paranoid schizophrenia. “It’s a constant uncertainty. For a few moments Rodrigo took the medication and was fine. But from one day to the next he felt like he shouldn’t take them anymore and the problems started. We have already had this tragedy, that of ‘Chano’ (for the musician) who ended up injured, and we will have more until it becomes easier to take a patient to the hospital,” he says.
Rodrigo grew up in Salguero in 1900 and moved to Canada at the age of 20. He was hospitalized for the first time in this country when he was about 40 years old. 30 days passed. He then accepted his family’s request to return to Buenos Aires. “As soon as he arrived, I experienced firsthand how difficult it is to take in someone,” Gonzalo, his other brother, said during a hearing.
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The deceased police officer was stabbed in the chest at heart level.
“He heard voices that didn’t exist”, “he talked to himself”, “he said incoherent words”, “he made strange physical movements”, “we took him to the hospital, they tied him up and he escaped” were some the symptoms they remembered during the trial. In January 2011, things got even worse: one morning he went to the door of the US embassy and took off his clothes. He said he had a message for then-President Barack Obama.
This situation led him to his first hospitalization in Argentina. He spent another thirty days and returned to his mother’s house in Salguero. “He had paranoia. He said ISIS members were pursuing him. He had the locks of his house changed three or four times,” his relatives said.
Juan Alberto Monforte, Rodrigo Roza’s psychiatrist
Monforte became his psychiatrist in 2014. Roza was constantly medicated. His family remembers Rodrigo’s best year being 2019. “I can say that I enjoyed it as a brother. We talked, he came to my office, and I made up tasks for him to keep him busy. He even took on a therapeutic assistant. “Of course,” confessed Gonzalo, who is a notary.
PFA inspector Juan Pablo Roldán, 34 years old. He had a 4-year-old son and was murdered just meters from Malba.
In 2020, the year of the pandemic, the family was in bad shape again. They worried again. The first symptom was physical movements of the head and shoulders. On September 18 of the same year, Rodrigo visited Monforte in his office. The specialist gave him an appointment for Friday, October 2nd and prescribed medication. Even though he stopped taking it.
And on Saturday the 26th, the worst: Roza returned to the US Embassy. He claimed to have a letter with a message to President Donald Trump. It was in the afternoon. He left home at night. On Sunday, he pushed a sister-in-law and a brother and again refused to take his medication. The Rozas called Monforte. They felt it was time to take him in. The psychiatrist told them they could admit him starting Monday at 7 p.m.
But three hours earlier, Roza left her house and murdered Roldán. Vadim Mischanchuk is the psychiatrist’s defense attorney. A few meters from the entrance to TOC 28, always on the Paraguayan sidewalk, he says that Monforte placed an order at a prepaid store on Sunday. “When Roza left the house, her family deactivated the request for an ambulance,” he says.
The pain and helplessness of Carolina Zambrano, widow of police officer Juan Pablo Roldán, as she leaves the trial. Photo Luciano Thieberger
Prosecutor Sandro Abraldes had requested a three-year prison sentence and an eight-year disqualification from office because of the police officer’s death. The complaint filed by Zambrano, Roldón’s widow, called for ten years in prison and another ten years of disqualification as the person responsible for the two deaths. According to the indictment, Roza posed an “imminent danger to himself and third parties” and Monforte “had the power to prevent that outcome and ignored all positive measures intended to neutralize or reduce it.”
“Our legal system does not allow a patient to forcibly commit their patient,” Mischanchuk added. “In these cases, you should call emergency services to hand him over to a security guard. There he is examined by a team consisting of a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a social worker and a nurse. This joint work will decide “an order of involuntary placement”.
Juan Roza experienced life with a patient firsthand. He admits that he felt guilty for two years because he believed he could have done more for his brother and avoided the tragedy. Until he was forgiven. Today he is proposing a change to the mental health law.
TOC 28 acquitted Rodrigo Roza’s psychiatrist. Photo Luciano Thieberger
“Internment becomes unfeasible when there are so many people in the middle. It should be something more sensible. We’re talking about addicts and psychiatric patients. It seems that if lawmakers don’t suffer from the problem, they make no move to change it.” “We are participating in the study because we want to raise awareness that it shouldn’t be so difficult to leave a loved one Getting people to the hospital,” he concluded.
