The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice has dismissed two appeals seeking to overturn the 28-year, 6-month prison sentence imposed on two Carabobo police officers found guilty of murdering a young man.
This decision is contained in file AA30-P-2024-00359, which contains a ruling drafted by Judge Maikel Moreno and signed by his colleagues in the Chamber, Carmen Marisela Castro and Elsa Gómez.
The uniformed officers prosecuted are identified as Marcos Antonio Reinoso García, material author of the homicide committed against Maikol Antonio Leal Cohello (20) and Kassandra Catherine Zambrano Balza, intellectual author of the aforementioned crime. Both were a couple on June 16, 2020, the date on which the event occurred.
That day, Marcos Reinoso went to the Boca del Río 1 residential complex, in the Santa Inés sector, Valencia (Carabobo), forcibly took Maikol Antonio and put him in a Chevrolet Optra driven by René Alejandro Martínez Mujica, the other Carabobo police officer sentenced to 21 years in prison for that murder.
After several transfers, the police moved to the Pirital sector, Los Guayos (Carabobo) where they shot Maikol twice. The body was found on July 17 of that year 2020.
Three years later, on February 22, 2023, the Third Trial Court issued a conviction against the three police officers, which was later confirmed by an appeals court. The Criminal Court also found no reason to overturn the conviction, according to a ruling published on August 13.
