Five years of minor imprisonment in its maximum degree and three years of minor imprisonment in its medium degree requested the Eastern Prosecutor for Alfonso Bulnes Concha and Enrique Searle, as authors of the beating against the gastronomic businessman Maximiliano Raide, which occurred on the night of the 1st of October 2020.
As a result of the attack, Raide lost part of the vision in his left eye. A report from the Legal Medical Service (SML) determined that Raide was left with “serious injuries that can be explained by the action of blunt objects and sharp objects, with a serious legal medical prognosis (…), leaving functional sequelae that are in recovery.”
“Stop bothering them”, that was the warning that Maximiliano Raide made that night to the defendants, who harassed a couple of women and that aroused the fury of these, who are frequent customers of the gastronomic sector of Alonso de Córdova with Francisco de Aguirre, in Vitacura. One of the witnesses, with initials FP C, stated that that night “I arrived at the European venue, and I recognized one of them, Enrique Searle…, the other person that I describe as dark-haired, light-colored eyes, about 30 years old, I don’t know. I knew, they were both drinking alcohol (…). A few minutes later, at the next table, some women stand up to leave the place that was closing, and the young man in a light blue vest begins to speak to one of them, asking where they are going, to which they reply ‘a house’, Alfonso Bulnes took her hand to stop her leaving, the girls felt uncomfortable with the harassment and left. They stand up and leave with glasses in hand, continuing the situation at the door of the premises on Alonso de Córdova street, where I lost sight of them,” says the witness, who, like the other witnesses, will identify a man “in a light blue vest” in reference to Alfonso Bulnes Concha.
“He pulled my hair”
One of the key statements was given by AD “When passing by our table these subjects begin to bother us repeatedly.” Later, when the women leave, bored “by the harassment and worried about the curfew”, Bulnes and Searle – according to AD – follow them and yell at them. Alfonso Bulnes “comes up behind me and pulls my hair,” he assured, declaring that “these two young subjects, in my opinion, were under the influence of alcohol and drugs, due to the level of harassment towards me and my friend, as the level of aggressiveness towards the driver of the vehicle,” he stated in the court file.
As described by the witnesses, the person who appears in their vehicle is the businessman and former Publisher of The counter, Max Raide. He stops and asks the excited young men to leave the women alone and stop drinking in the street. But this warning kindled the anger of the two defendants.
“It was at that moment when, without any provocation, one of them [Bulnes de chaleco celeste] He opens the driver’s door, smashes a drink in his face, and starts assaulting him. While the second individual [Searle] He opens the passenger door and begins to attack him with fist blows, ”says a dozen witnesses who witnessed the attack.
One of the women who had previously been harassed by them went back to the car to try to get rid of Bulnes, who had half of his body inside Raide’s car and was hitting him hard, but he couldn’t. That is why the car attendant who is usually in the European parking lot intervenes, LV, who does manage to get the body out of the car and stop hitting Raide.
They also run to the car BS and R. H, two restaurant employees who were waiting for a bus. They and the other witnesses see how Bulnes and Searle walk away from the car, leaving Max Raide unconscious and jump, a few meters further, the wall of the house located at Pedro Villagra 2474, owned by Gustavo Cobarrubias, who worked as administrator of the field of the Bulnes Concha family, who hides them inside. “The owner of the house comes out and tells us to leave,” declared another of the witnesses.
This detail, of escaping by jumping over a wall, is key to understanding how this process continued. Raide, according to what the current deputy and firefighter Cristian Araya testifies as a witness, was in an unfortunate physical state, and together with helping him, he takes him to the emergency room of the German Clinic, where the ophthalmologist on duty diagnoses him with “ocular trauma severe with fracture of the floor of the left orbit and left traumatic uveitis”.
Stained Papers
Neither Alfonso Bulnes nor Enrique Searle have clean papers. The day after the attack, on October 2, Bulnes was sentenced to three years of supervised release for driving while intoxicated, running a red light and killing, in 2017, Domingo Vicuña Subercaseaux, then 25 years old. , and son of the manager of the law firm where another of the Bulnes Concha brothers works.
The Prosecutor’s Office considers, in its accusation, that for Alfonso Bulnes article 12, no. 14, of the Penal Code is applicable, which considers committing a crime “while serving a sentence” or after “having broken it” an aggravating circumstance, in this case for the death of Domingo Vicuña
In the case of Enrique Searle, he also does not have “irreproachable previous conduct”, since his record contains a 2019 conviction for drug use “in public and arranged for it”, in San Felipe, a process that ended with the payment of a penalty fee.
Alfonso Bulnes Concha studied Commercial Engineering at the Adolfo Ibáñez University, following a different path from that of his lawyer brothers. Joaquín and Arturo –former Undersecretary of National Assets– belong to the Larraín studio. While José Miguel Bulnes Concha, lawyer and lobbyist, He was a questioned member of the Board of Directors of Servel.
Although Max Raide’s lawyers, led by Juan Domingo Acosta and former prosecutor Alberto Aguilera, managed to get Bulnes to serve preventive detention in the High Security prison in the first months of the court case, this did not prevent the family of the accused has exerted undue pressure to prevent the minor of the Bulnes Concha family from going to jail again. The lawyer Matías Lastra, from the Vial y Cía. studio, where José Miguel Bulnes works, requested through the Transparency Law the procedures to deliver the commercial licenses of the restaurants that the Raide family has in Vitacura –which all turned out to be in order–, by way of intimidation.
