After seven years of the Jagüitas massacre perpetrated by police agents against three members of the Reyes Ramírez family, who were shot dead while returning from an evangelical cult, the repressive institution reinstated the uniformed gunmen into their ranks. Currently eight of the accused policemen are active within the “forces of order.”
According to official records, the person most responsible for the massacre was the head of the operation, then-captain Zacarías Salgado, who had a sentence that would end in 2026. However, he was decorated and promoted by President Daniel Ortega in 2018. In total, they were 14 officers processed, of which nine were accused and convicted, eight of them are active in the institution, one in civilian life, despite the fact that the sentence established prison sentences that ranged between two and 11 years.
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In addition, officer Óscar José Vargas Rugama, who was a lieutenant in 2015, was named captain on the same day. His sentence ended until 2021. Along with them, they were also promoted: Jairo Antonio Aguilar Hernández and Johny Henry Palacio Jiménez to captain; Noel Antonio Altamirano to senior non-commissioned officer; and Henry Cruz to inspector.
On July 11, 2015, Katherine Ramírez, Aura Reyes and Efraín Ramírez were murdered. They all came from an evangelical cult in the Villa Libertad sector, and to shorten the path to his home, in the Augusto César Sandino neighborhood, Milton took a shortcut through the Cuatro Esquinas sector. They were traveling in a white Toyota Corolla vehicle.
At that time, the road was dirt, narrow and dark, which made it difficult for travelers to see. Yelka Nohemi came in the car; Milton Ezequiel Reyes Ramirez; four years old; Axel Antonio Reyes Ramírez, 14 years old; and Miriam Natasha Guzmán Ramírez, five years old, the last two minors were wounded by gunshots.
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The massacre was officially presented as “an error”, according to the judicial file of the case. According to the version of the institution, the Antinarcotics Directorate of the National Police received information that in the Cuatro Esquinas sector “a large shipment of drugs would pass, for which the criminals would use a light vehicle, white, and a motorcycle. , as advanced.
“When all the riot police and the police were here, I asked them for help and not one of them helped me. Until the time they wanted, (when) the bodies were already being removed. Until the moment they wanted, they took people to the hospital,” one of the victims testified.
The case was particular and unleashed fury in public opinion not only because of the violence against the family, but also because the armed officers blocked the neighbors who tried to help the victims of the massacre.
