The justice ordered preventive detention and an embargo of 300 million pesos for the businessman Roberto Juan Patricelli (57), who is accused of simple homicide with eventual intent and serious and minor injuries due to the crash he carried out in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo, in in which a 20-year-old man and a 15-year-old teenager died, sources from the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) informed Télam.
The businessman’s lawyer, Diego Olmedo, told this agency that “the judge’s arguments are wrong” because “the variable of manslaughter aggravated by negligent driving continues to exist” and announced that he will appeal the sentence.
MPF sources pointed out that due to the change of cover the case goes to the national jurisdiction ex officio.
Patricelli will be housed in a police station in the City of Buenos Aires (CABA) and will be transferred “when there is space” to the National Penitentiary Service.
On Tuesday, the investigation of the 57-year-old businessman lasted five hours at the North Flagrancia Prosecutor’s Office No. 7 of Comuna 13 in Buenos Aires, during which “he made a statement and did not answer questions because the prosecution was going to ask the moment of the accident, of which he does not remember anything,” Olmedo said on that occasion.
The lawyer maintained that Patricelli had a “blockade, he was not drunk” at the time he rammed his vehicle, at 150 kilometers per hour, into three cars, on Sunday night, in front of the Buenos Aires racetrack in Palermo, with a result of two dead young people, aged 15 and 20, and nine injured.
Patricelli’s breathalyzer test, who was driving a BMW brand vehicle, came back positive with a result of 0.51gr/l.
The young man, identified as Juan Márquez, died at the Pirovano hospital, while the 15-year-old girl, Jenismar Márquez, died at the Fernández hospital.
A first vehicle hit by Patricelli’s was a Peugeot 207, with a man and a woman inside, both adults.
The second vehicle, a Ford K car, was left in an inverted position, with three men and two women trapped inside, among whom were both deceased, whose bodies were freed by City firefighters using hydraulic tools.
The third vehicle involved in the multiple collision was a Toyota Limit, where two women were traveling, who descended by their own means.
In the fourth vehicle involved, a BMW X3, there were two women and one man, all adults, who also exited the vehicle under their own power.