The prosecutor investigating the crime of Lautaro Morello, who was found murdered and burned in Guernica after having disappeared on December 9 with his friend Lucas Escalante, whose whereabouts are still unknown, requested this Friday preventive detention for the two detainees for the case, reported sources of the investigation.
The requirement of the prosecutor of Florencio Varela Mariana Dongiovanni fell on Cristian Centurión, son of a major commissioner of the Buenos Aires police and who is a cadet of that force, and his cousin Maximiliano Centurión.
Carlos Dieguez, lawyer for Lautaro’s family, informed Télam that Dongiovanni requested the preventive detention of both defendants as “co-authors” of the crime of “homicide qualified by cruelty and treachery.”
This request was presented at noon in the Court of Guarantees of Florencio Varela in charge of Julián Busteros, who will now have to decide whether or not to prosecute in the terms proposed by the prosecution.
In turn, the lawyer indicated that by order of the Attorney General of the province of Buenos Aires, the Buenos Aires police were separated from the investigation and the Argentine Federal Police (PFA) will act instead.
In addition, the lawyer explained that Judge Busteros must also resolve a request for the investigation of the whereabouts in the case of Lucas to be investigated as a “forced disappearance of a person.”
Last Monday, one month after the disappearance of both young people, Lorena, Lucas’s sister, called on the authorities to “keep looking for him alive” by marching in front of the Florencio Varela prosecutor’s office and the local Municipality.
That day it was also learned that the investigations had obtained new evidence that compromised the Centurión since telephone messages were found indicating that both were together that night at the time of the disappearance, added to the fact that a witness located the vehicle of one of them. next to which the missing youth traveled.
On the other hand, a source of the investigation revealed that the main hypothesis is that Lucas would be the link with the defendants and Lautaro was “an innocent secondary to the situation”.
Lucas Escalante (26) was last seen on Friday, December 9 in the town of Bosques, Florencio Varela’s game, when he went to look for Morello (18) to go out to celebrate the victory of the Argentine National Team against the Netherlands for the semifinals of the World Cup in Qatar aboard a BMW car that appeared the next day on fire.
Morello’s semi-charred body was found around 9:30 p.m. on December 15 next to the Buen Ayre highway under construction, in Guernica, President Perón’s party, and nothing is yet known about Escalante.
In such circumstances, the Centurión were arrested, who were linked to the case after the analysis of security cameras and cell phone antennas.
In a security camera footage from a Florencio Varela service station, Cristian Centurión is seen around 12:30 a.m. on December 10 loading gasoline into a white drum that is suspected to have been used to incinerate Lucas’s car and the Lautaro’s corpse
In this context, the national government offers a reward of 4,000,000 pesos for those who provide information that allows them to find the whereabouts of Lucas.
