The Supreme Court confirmed the sentence condemning three former Carabineros non-commissioned officers to 10 years and one day of effective imprisonment for their responsibility in the qualified homicide of 23-year-old Patricio Leonel González González, committed in December 1985 in the commune of Puente Alto. by Darío Núñez

In a unanimous ruling (case file 206-2020), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, minister María Teresa Letelier, and acting lawyer Pía Tavolari—dismissed any error in the sentence that applied the aggravating circumstance of treachery (alevosía) in the classification of the crime and rejected the appeals for cassation filed by the convicted individuals Juan Orlando Muñoz Orellana, Nelson Mario Pérez Cabezas, and Ramón Antonio Venegas Arenas.

The facts

In the investigation of the case, the visiting minister of the Court of Appeals of San Miguel, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, was able to determine the facts that demonstrate the crime and the aggravating circumstances under which it was committed.

On December 10, 1985, around 01:30 hours, Patricio Leonel González González, accompanied by two other militants of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR), was driving a car along Calle Arturo Prat in the commune of Puente Alto, heading east.

The vehicle in question had been seized from its owner the previous day in the commune of Providencia. In the trunk of the car, they were carrying two 9 mm caliber submachine guns, a 12-gauge hunting shotgun, a .32 caliber revolver, a 9 mm caliber pistol, 75 rounds of 9 mm ammunition, 10 rounds of 12/65 hunting ammunition, two hand grenades, and two packages of explosives without detonators.

Upon reaching the intersection of Prat and Avenida Concha y Toro, in front of the Regimiento de Ingenieros N° 2 in Puente Alto, the car in which the Rodríguez Front militants were traveling was intercepted by four individuals dressed in civilian clothes, who were the Carabineros officers Iván de Jesús Belmar Fuentes—now deceased—, Juan Orlando Muñoz Orellana, Nelson Mario Pérez Cabezas, and Ramón Antonio Venegas Arenas.

After following the vehicle, they cut it off, ambushed it at the location, took cover, and then lunged at it, firing at the occupants with the 9 mm UZI submachine guns they were carrying.

Faced with the armed attack, the passenger in the front seat and the person in the back seat exited the vehicle and fled along Avenida Concha y Toro in a southerly direction. The attack was carried out from the driver’s side of the car, causing Patricio González González to be wounded immediately; he remained inside the vehicle, which continued moving in a south-easterly direction, colliding with a guard booth of the aforementioned regiment.

The young militant received six ballistic impacts in various parts of his body, which caused his death.

Following the incident, the Carabineros altered the crime scene to try to hide the treacherous nature of their actions, as the victim was placed in the front right seat of the vehicle, the place where he was found by officers of the Homicide Brigade of the Policía de Investigaciones and photographed by an expert from the Criminalistics Laboratory of the same institution.

For the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, ".....since the death of González González was produced by the actions of the accused, who took advantage of factual conditions that allowed them to diminish the risks inherent in the criminal action, whether they came from the possible reaction of the victim and his companions or by ensuring the impossibility of the victim's defense.

This constitutes a treacherous homicide, due to the special concurrence of the execution method of acting with certainty."

Indeed, without prejudice to the alteration of the crime scene established by the sentencing judge..., it is unquestionable that, as asserted by the owner of the vehicle in which González González was traveling, corroborated by the officers of the Special Operations Group of the Carabineros de Chile who arrived at the scene due to the discovery of the weapons in the trunk of the vehicle, and ratified by the expert from the Policía de Investigaciones de Chile who performed the commissioned ballistic analysis, said car received eight bullet impacts on the left side and three in the rear, six of which penetrated the body of the driver of the vehicle, who died at the scene.

Added to this is the fact that, according to the trajectory of such ballistic impacts determined by the expert from the Policía de Investigaciones de Chile, these correspond to shots fired from below upwards, clearly consistent with the fact recognized by the accused, including Belmar Fuentes, now deceased, of having taken cover behind trees existing at the location," the ruling reproduces.

Source: resumen.cl, November 17, 2022