Kevin Molina was nine when killed in a shootout in Villa Zavaleta (Photo via La Poderosa)
Seven coastguard (prefectura) officers have been charged for failing to act during a prolonged shoot out between drug gangs that ended the life of nine-year-old Kevin Molina last year.
According to prosecutor Adrián Giménez, the officers are charged with “failing to perform the duties of a public servant” for not responding to repeated calls from locals in Villa Zavaleta informing them of the shoot out taking place barely 100m from their station. The officers sent to the location in two vehicles repeatedly reported to radio operators that no shots were being fired.
“It was unequivocal that shots were being fired,” wrote Giménez in his report, adding that the emergency calls “coincided (in their description) and came from different phone numbers.”
The seven officers will now face questioning from a judge.
Kevin was hiding under a table in his house during the shootout on 7th September 2013, when a stray bullet hit him in the head. His relatives and neighbours say the security forces are to blame for his death for deliberately allowing the shootout to continue.
Luciano Ortiz Almonacid, the lawyer representing Kevin’s family, said that “the response of the officers, who made radio statements that cannot be justified like ‘negative to shootings’ or ‘the panorama is normal’ points to the most awful part of our history, as they clearly had created a ‘free zone’ to allow crime to go on under their noses.”
Ortiz Almonacid celebrated the decision in a statement published yesterday by La Garganta Poderosa, a magazine run out of Villa Zavaleta that has been leading the campaign to demand justice for Kevin.
However, he added that the time taken just to summon the officers showed a clear “disinterest” from the judiciary. “This apathy could only be overcome thanks to the determined work of the locals who are part of ‘La Poderosa’, who report the truth and reveal what was being hidden even when faced with intimidating actions… [cases like this] expose how the state abandons the most impoverished through the security forces that it doesn’t know how to control.”
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