Hearing on coercion set for tomorrow against police officers accused of killing five men in La Barranquita

Santiago.- The Judicial Office of Permanent Attention of the judicial district of Santiago will hear tomorrow Friday, starting at 9:00 in the morning, the coercive measure against eleven agents of the National Police accused of the death of five men in an event that occurred on September 10 in the La Barranquita sector. The Public Ministry filed on Thursday the request in which it asks the court to impose 18 months of preventive detention on the defendants and that the process be declared a complex case, due to the seriousness of the events and the number of defendants. Among those processed are officers and enlisted personnel from different departments of the uniformed forces, including: Álvaro Paredes Paniagua (major), José Gómez Rodríguez (captain), Domingo de los Santos Vargas (second lieutenant), Yohandy Encarnación (corporal), Geyser Francisco Álvarez Rodríguez (corporal) and Adrián Miguel Villalona Pineda (private), assigned to the Department of Complex Crimes Investigation. Also listed are Hansel M. Cuevas Carrasco (major), Sócrates Fidel Félix Félix (sergeant major), Hairo Mateo Morillo (sergeant), César Augusto Martínez Trinidad (corporal) and José Octavio Jiménez Peña (private), belonging to the Cibao Central Regional Investigation Sub-Directorate.

You can also read: Eleven police officers involved in the deaths of La Barranquita

The victims were identified as Edward Bernardo Peña Rodríguez, Carlos Enrique Guzmán Navarro (alias Charly or Charli Chasc), José Vladimir Valerio Estévez, Elvis Antonio Martínez Rodríguez and Julio Alberto Gómez, who died during an operation in a shopping plaza on Olímpica Avenue, where the hairdressing salon of Valerio Estévez was located. Family members of the young hairdresser claim that both he and his client, Julio Alberto Gómez, were executed by the agents, while the relatives of the other deceased demand justice and that this act not go unpunished, calling it a “mass execution”. The hearing, which will be held at the Federico Álvarez Courthouse, is shaping up to be one of the most followed judicial proceedings in the province due to the number of police officers charged and the social pressure demanding exemplary sanctions.