In the middle of a police operation, a 3-year-old minor was hit by a bullet in the municipality of La Pradera, Valle del Cauca. The procedure where she was injured, according to reports from the authorities, was carried out with the purpose of arresting a man who had an arrest warrant.
At the time of the bullet impact, little Eiling Mariana Hurtado López was on the street learning to ride a bicycle under the care of her mother, according to the testimony provided by the family of the deceased minor.
“The Police procedure had as its objective the capture of citizen Julián Moreno, who was required by court order for the crime of homicide, there was an exchange of shots in which a minor was injured, who later died as a result of the severity of their injuries,” as noted by Colonel Jesús Enrique Quintero Rave, commander of the Valle Department Police.
The authorities also expressed their condolences to the victim’s family: “We regret this act of violence and express solidarity with the relatives of the injured person and the minor who lost her life,” Quintero commented.
For her part, the minor’s mother, who was also injured in the middle of the firefight, is being treated at the San Roque health center. There she awaits her recovery, which could involve an amputation of two fingers on her hand.
However, the question arises as to why the operation resulted in a shooting. According to official information from the Police, some people from the community sought to protect the fugitive and attacked the uniformed officers who were carrying out the act against the object of their search.
However, for the relatives and relatives of the victims, things were not this way. The recent statements by the minor’s uncle, Kevin López, refute the statements made by police officers. In the words of López: “What we want is for justice to be done and to deny what the commander said, because he supposedly said that there were shots fired from both sides, that the truth was not like that, because the person they had been following, The person ran, and when they reached that paved block they, without measuring distance, without looking that there were children riding bicycles, playing ball, they arrived shooting shots.”
In that sense, the group of lawyers defending the family confirmed the version of the family of the deceased minor. The statements of Alí Bantú Ashanti, head of the group, supported the hypothesis that the uniformed men, in part, are responsible for the girl’s death. “We have realized that this was an abuse of power, a police abuse that sadly took the life of Mariana, and we are going to accompany the CTI of the Prosecutor’s Office to collect all the evidence to demonstrate that this was indeed an abuse of power. power,” said the lawyer.
Furthermore, he added that these types of search mechanisms for suspected criminals must be carried out with caution as long as they occur in places where children reside. And although the objective of capturing alias Julián for the crime of homicide was fully carried out, the defense of the minor’s family pointed out that this objective does not ignore the means used. Bantu Ashanti declared that “they were persecuting a person, but the persecution of a person cannot cost us our lives, much less if it involves children. The police know that black and poor people live in the houses, they know that people will die with the bullets that our taxes pay for, when they shoot, which they always do in our neighborhoods, it is with the purpose of killing whoever.”
Commander Quintero’s response to these accusations was as follows: “The National Police reiterates its commitment to providing all institutional capabilities to advance, together with the Technical Investigation Corps and the Attorney General’s Office, in the clarification of these events. ”. With Infobae
