Countless vehicles and pedestrians pass through the Gonzalo Ramirez Avenue at the height of Rodo Park. They come, they come, they pass and they run. Due to the schedule, the shops were closed, and the neighborhood in general was asleep when at 4:30 this Sunday a detonation of a firearm alerted two police officers who were monitoring the area. The patrol car changed gear and approached Gonzalo Ramirez and Juan Paullier where confirmed a homicide.
A 20-year-old man had been shot to death after hearing cumshots, broken glass bottles and arguments. By then, a group of witnesses had dissipated. Although the victim – with no criminal record – was transferred to a hospital, she died after being admitted, around 5:00.
One person reported The Observer that what was heard was simple: an argument between several people, a single shot and the group dispersing. Everything was filmed by public and private video surveillance cameras, to which the prosecutor’s office and the police had access.
Some neighbors heard something, but they were the minority. For most of those who live there, the fact went unnoticed or found out later from the press information. As it is an area with several buildings, the night-time doormen were privileged witnesses of a something that Parque Rodó is not used to: a violent death.
The police receive complaints from the place by pedestrians who steal an object, a robbery of a home or an act of violence, but they do not usually work with homicide calls. The neighborhood woke up on Sunday without being very clear about what had happened, but something was already being discussed in the bakery, in the store or in the cart in the park. Just isolated data from someone who had heard here or there, without further ado.
three teenagers 15 and 16 years old are suspected of having participated in the crime, but Justice released them this Monday afternoon at the request of the prosecution, emplacedby Lack of evidence. They were applied limiting measures such as fixation of domicile and impossibility of leaving the country. Also, the murder weapon not yet appeared and there is a fugitive person.
The homicide that happened
Diego Battiste
Avenida Gonzalo Ramírez corner Juan Paullier
Remarkably, the neighborhood WhatsApp group of the style “Neighbors on alert” had little movement from Sunday to Monday. A neighbor limited herself to sending the news of a media outlet, and another wrote four lines somewhat indignant about a new homicide, this time in his neighborhood. There were no more responses in the chat until Monday afternoon, he found The Observer.
The crime passed by. Few say anything, but it is not for fear of reprisals or for not wanting to collaborate; simply because only a few know about the fact that brought the neighborhood to the front pages of the media this Sunday, in the midst of a violent weekend with three homicides in one morning.
A lady who is outside her workplace this Monday explains that she is unaware of that violent death because at that time of the morning she was not there. She immediately explains her – from the sidewalk – that he doesn’t even have his cell phone with him “or anything” because recently it was stolen in that place. Another neighbor around the corner says he has called the police because people live in the entrance to his house, and on one occasion they did not let him in, that there is lighting, that the police patrol, but that is not enough.
Joaquín Requena street begins at Bulevar Artigas and ends at a staircase next to a bus stop in the Parque Rodó neighborhood. A lifelong neighbor there remembers that for as long as he can remember there have been gatherings on the stairs, but he says that now the intentions of those who gather there have changed. He does not even say that they are or are not people from the neighborhood, because most are there “in passing”.
