Deaths of four youths questions Macri policy of allowing police to fire on fleeing persons

[sandensea]

A dozen Argentine police officers have been suspended pending a probe into the deaths of four youths during a chase in which shots were fired into their car, officials said Thursday.

The incident happened Monday night when a car with five local youths failed to stop on police orders in the small town of San Miguel del Monte, about an hour's drive south of Buenos Aires.

Police pursued the car and then fired several shots into it from close range, after which it crashed into a parked truck. The chase, captured on security cameras, showed an officer leaning out the window of the patrol car and pointing into the vehicle, just before the crash.

Four people - three teens and the 22 year-old driver - were killed. The only survivor, a 13-year-old girl, is in serious condition in hospital.

"Thousands of theories come to us," Lucas Sanguineti, uncle of the sole survivor, Rocío Guagliarello, said.

"That the policeman had stopped them to ask for money, that the boys saw something they should not have seen. In any case, we can't believe what happened. Four dead children, with a life ahead of them - and with Rocío now full of tubes."

The police they want

The tragedy, now known as the San Miguel del Monte Massacre, has put the right-wing Mauricio Macri administration on the defensive over their policy of giving police broader powers.

Critics point to a decree signed by Macri on December 3 authorizing federal officers to use lethal force against fleeing suspects - a radical change in Argentine law, which since 1983 authorizes police use of gunfire only when their own lives or those of others are in danger.

Since Macri took office in late 2015, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has expressed concern over the excessive and indiscriminate use of force - as well as over the use of indefinite detention against critics and opponents.

Former Security Minister Cecilia Rodríguez placed the blame squarely on her successor, Patricia Bullrich, who has publicly backed officers facing murder charges after shooting unarmed suspects.

"Faced with the irrationality of such cases, she and the president sit with these policemen on television."

"This shows the type of police they want."

At: https://news.yahoo.com/argentine-police-probed-youths-killed-chase-193248824.html

San Miguel del Monte Massacre victims, from left: Camila López (13), Gonzalo Domínguez (14), Danilo Sansone (13), and Aníbal Suárez (22). A fifth teen, Rocío Guagliarello (13), remains in critical condition.

Their deaths during a police chase, during which officers fired repeatedly despite the youths' being unarmed and not having engaged in any illegalities, has put the Macri administration on the defensive over its policy of allowing police gunfire against fleeing persons.

Since Macri took office in 2015, the number of deaths at the hands of police has risen from 300 annually to over 450.

[Judi Lynn]

1. These kids were very young teenagers, except for Anbal Surez, barely into their teen years.

The story is shocking! It indicates the country is already sliding into a serious state of authoritarianism surely most people do NOT want to see again with the last dictatorship still well within national memory. The cops in San Miguel del Monte seem to believe Macri is well underway turning the country over to some very radical muscle flexing against the people.

Looks as if Macri has been sending out all the same signals as Bolsonaro, just doing it in a lower-key, more secretive way, and still getting the message out.

He'd have a hard time being more conspicuous than Bolsonaro, wouldn't he?

I just found an article which refers to the current survivor, here in a google translation:

This young woman is the only person who can tell what happened during the police persecution that caused the death of her four friends: Gonzalo Domínguez, Camila López, Danilo Sansone and Aníbal Suárez.

The doctors reported that the 13-year-old girl has a reserved prognosis.
Rocío Guagliarello, the 13-year-old girl who survived the tragedy of San Miguel del Monte, continues to fight. This was reflected in the medical report released this Friday by the authorities of the High Complexity Hospital El Cruce, in Florencio Varela, where it is hospitalized .
Rocío is seriously ill, housed in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. It continues "mechanically ventilated, with high ventilatory requirements due to acute respiratory distress in progress," it was reported. In addition, it presents "a picture compatible with sepsis" that is being fought with medicines.

The forecast is reserved.

. . .

The car in which the five young people were traveling, a Fiat 147, was pursued by two police from the Buenos Aires police force and hit a truck stopped at kilometer 111 of the 9 de Julio bus, which ends at Route 3 and was divided into two parts, which were separated 50 meters apart from each other.

The four minors were friends, they knew each other because they shared classes at the San Miguel del Monte Middle School and, according to what their relatives said, they used to get together in the area of ​​the waterfront in their free time to " rapear y andar en skate." (translation doesn't work here)

(Looked up trying to find a translation for "rapear" into contemporary terms:

"a. rapear
Residente writes lyrics and raps for the group, and his brother produces the music.Residente escribe las letras y rapea en el grupo, y su hermano produce la música.
7. (colloquial) (to talk) (United States)
a. charlar
We stood there rapping for a few minutes while we waited for the train.Nos quedamos allí charlando unos minutos mientras esperábamos el tren."

https://www.spanishdict.com/translate/rap

That translation makes sense, #7.)

That day Camila had been with her best friend Rocío all afternoon and had asked her mother's permission to stay at her house and they could go to school the next day. At night they had been sitting on the sidewalk, which was where they had better signal with their cell phones, laughing and talking.

After a while and as a mischief, Rocio and Camila - who had recently changed to that school - went with their two friends to "take a walk" in the car of Hannibal, who was bigger than them, but he was the cousin of another of his classmates.

What happened during that car ride is what Justice investigates. Behind that, there is the demand of a people who mourn four of their children and rebelled against impunity.

https://misionesonline.net/2019/05/24/rocio-guagliarello-la-unica-sobreviviente-de-la-tragedia-de-san-miguel-del-monte-continua-grave/


The cops couldn't have been more wrong with these youngsters.

Thank you, sandensea. Sure hope the last little one survives, but her life will not be easy for her, now, after her experience. I have heard survivors can have a horrendous reaction incorrectly experienced as "survivor's guilt" in simply surviving while another or others were taken... Very, very sad.