Lucas Villa: the most notorious crime of the protests in Colombia celebrates a year in impunity

May 5, 2021 Lucas Villa Vasquez He went out to protest in the Colombian city of Pereira but never returned home, was shot and died six later. Today, his relatives cry out for justice for a crime that has not yet been clarified that made this student the visible face of social protests.

town37 years old, I was a university student of Sports Sciences and participated in the protests against the government of President Ivan Dukepeacefully chanting slogans, dancing and motivating the rest of their classmates to continue demonstrating.

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Nevertheless, his voice was silenced when he participated in a sit-in at the César Gaviria Trujillo Viaduct that connects Pereira, capital of the department of Risaralda, with neighboring Dosquebradas.

Over there, unknown persons opened fire from a vehicle seriously injuring him, after which he was diagnosed with brain death and died on May 11.

Sidssy Uribe Vásquez, one of the sisters of townassures Efe that the progress of the Prosecutor’s investigation “has been very little”, especially if one takes into account that It was the most notorious case of the social outbreak of 2021 and that 12 months have passed since the crime was committed.

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“Today is the day (…) they haven’t told us anything, they don’t tell us about hearings, or about no accusednor that they are going to call someone, suddenly, to inquire about the issues of the omission, ”says the young woman.

Lucas Villa during a protest against the Colombian government. (twitter/)

What Uribe Vásquez denounces is that the day that Villa received the eight bullet wounds “there was an omission on the part of the Police” and that the technical investigation body (CTI) of the Prosecutor’s Office, which is in charge of collecting the evidence and carrying out the investigations, only arrived the day after the crime.

“We learned that the ballistic material was lost that day and what was found was vanilla from which the Police shoot (…) that do not penetrate the body. However, we were able to recover a bullet that did not enter my brother’s body. The Prosecutor’s Office has had it since last year.”says the woman.

One of the hypotheses of the family is that the crime was perpetrated by a criminal gang known as La Cordillerawhich is even the one that seems to be behind the death threats against the leftist presidential candidate Gustavo Petroin collusion with the police.

“Why isn’t the Police being investigated if they weren’t there that day? That was the only day in all the marches (…) in which the Police and the Mayor’s Office of Pereira did not want the Esmad (Mobile Anti-riot Squad) to intervene “, the woman points out.

A HAPPY PERSON

The name of town It was hoisted by thousands of Colombians who kept the hope that he would recover and who through art asked for justice so that attacks like the ones he suffered are not repeated.

In videos recorded before the attack, Lucas is seen dancing in the streets; waving to police officers, to whom he gave flowers, and yelling messages like “they are killing us.”

“A year has passed and it’s still very hard because, in a certain way and I don’t know if it’s normal, I have prolonged the mourning by being active remembering it with people, hugging those who also loved him without having known him,” says Vásquez.

The young woman remembers her brother as Colombians knew him in the videos, as a “very outgoing person”, as someone who used to be the joker at the party, the one who made jokes.”

“Her manners were very funny, not because it was ridiculous but because her way of being was very humorous”, she expresses and remembers that he liked to listen to her sing.

PERSECUTION AND FEAR

Uribe Vásquez decided to become an activist and one of her banners is the fight against impunity in the case of her brother, which is why she has denounced that she and other relatives have received threats and have been persecuted.

“The day the public diagnosis (of Villa’s brain death) was made without permission from his mother’s family, without our permission (…) a person approached me and my brothers who threatened us, informing us that if we continued with what we were doing they stopped us. ‘They stop or we stop them’, they told us”, details.

To this is added that days after the crime motorcyclists began to take photos of them and even four people followed her one day in the center of Pereiraso she had to take refuge in a union headquarters until she felt safe.

“After that, more or less a month or two after Lucas’s death, they also took pictures of me, there were people taking pictures of me, profiling me (…) in the places where I met with other citizens who participated in the demonstrations ”, he assures.

However, he remains firm in his activism and hopes that the case of Lucas, who was one of the 83 people killed during the protests, of which at least 44 allegedly died due to disproportionate action by the public force, will soon be resolved.

Source: Elcomercio