Buenos Aires, Feb 5 (NA) – A Federal Police inspector is to stand trial for murdering his partner, also a member of the security force, on December 8 in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Liniers.
Julián Ariel Urcelay is accused of beating and shooting Fabiana Soledad Viyagra to death and then staging a suicide.
Judge Carina Nancy Rodríguez, of Court No. 29, granted the request of prosecutor Adrián María Gentili for the officer from the Purchases and Contracts Division to face trial for the femicide of his partner.
According to the indictment, Urcelay argued with and beat Viyagra, then shot her twice in the head with his service weapon. After committing the crime, he altered the scene to simulate a suicide.
Based on the evidence gathered, “the first shot was fired by the accused from a distance of more than fifty centimeters (50 cm). The projectile entered the victim's body at the mid-level of the right submaxillary area of the face and exited through the left frontoparietal region of the skull.” Forensic pathologists from the Morgue stated that “while the possibility of her firing a second shot cannot be ruled out, that situation is highly unlikely, given the anatomical brain destruction caused by the same shot.” “Furthermore, to fire the second shot, the accused would have had to place the gun's barrel against the right temple of the victim's scalp.”
According to the Argentine News Agency, after the murder, the man arranged the scene to make it look like the woman had committed suicide and alerted 911. The 9th Precinct of the Buenos Aires Police and an ambulance from the Emergency Medical Attention System (SAME) were dispatched, which confirmed Viyagra's death.
Although Urcelay refused to testify in the first two interrogations, on a third occasion and at the request of his defense, he gave a statement. There, he stated that he argued with the victim to separate, and during the fight, she went to the bedroom and started packing her suitcase to leave the apartment.
However, the Public Prosecutor's Office emphasizes that when Urcelay was in the kitchen, he heard “two shots fired practically simultaneously, with less than a second of difference,” so he went to the room and found Viyagra “on the floor, with her head in the closet.”
The Prosecutor's Office representative pointed out: “The injuries caused by each shot, individually or separately, are capable of causing death.” “In addition to the suicide hypothesis being ruled out due to the intracranial injuries caused by the passage of the first projectile, it is irrational to suppose that the named person, using a pistol, first fired a shot from more than fifty centimeters below her jaw to then fire a second shot with the barrel against her skull.”
On December 29 of last year, Judge Rodríguez ordered Urcelay's preventive imprisonment as the author of the crime of aggravated homicide for having been committed against the person with whom he maintained a relationship.
Later, on January 16, the prosecutor's office requested the case be elevated to trial, and on that occasion, Urcelay's defense opposed the case being elevated to trial and requested the inspector's acquittal, on the grounds that “the investigation was not complete, that the fact nor the authorship had been proven with the required degree of probability, and that reasonable doubts not dispelled remained, derived mainly from the omission of evidence production.”
However, on January 29 of last year, the judge ruled that the defense's request for acquittal should be rejected, declare the case closed, and elevate it to trial.
