Prosecutor’s Office formalizes the great-uncle of a minor found lifeless in Arauco for qualified homicide and calls for preventive detention

At this time, the formalization hearing of Jorge Escobar, Tomás Bravo’s great-uncle, under 3 years of age, was found dead in the Caripilún sector, Arauco province, Biobío Region, after being missing for 9 days.

The Public Ministry formalized the only detainee so far for the crime of qualified homicide, requesting preventive detention for the accused, considering him a danger to society, as well as the risk of flight of the accused.

At the hearing, the prosecutor José Andrés Ortiz recounted the events that occurred on Wednesday, February 17, the last day that the minor was seen alive after leaving with Escobar, supposedly to carry some cows.

“The accused, betraying this trust and that placed by the child’s mother, transferred him to a place approximately two kilometers from the family home and taking advantage of the absence of people and its desolation, using the superiority of his strength and reason of this, acting on insurance, and with the intention of killing exerts on the child maneuvers to introduce some element of a forceful, elastic, undetermined nature into his mouth, generating a suffocation that later causes death”Said the persecutor.

In addition, the prosecutor read several statements from the investigation, one of them the minor’s mother, Estefanía Gutiérrez. “Tomás is a very happy child, with personality, mischievous like any child and very playful, being very attached to me and my family,” says that statement.

On the day of the disappearance, the child’s mother related: “I spoke with my father and asked him what happened, he told me ‘daughter, my little boy got lost, the cows were torn from me, I told him son stay here and when I came back It was gone and I started looking for it. I went to the road to see if I had taken the road, but I did not find it and I called La Pacita ‘, so he says to my sister María Paz. He gave me a kiss on the forehead and a hug, while he began to cry ”.

According to that statement, the child’s mother said on that occasion: “I believe that my uncle is a good person, he has never disrespected anyone, neither me nor my sister or other women or children, always being a father figure for me and Tomacito ”. On this, he continued: “At that moment, after not having found any clue of where my son could be, it is not that I distrust my father, since I love him very much, but at the same time I cannot blindly say that I do not I have done nothing, since I don’t know what to think because everything is weird ”.

In addition, the prosecutor related some statements made by the defendant, prior to his arrest, where he argued that the minor was lost when he went to move some cows.

In one of them, on February 18, a day after the boy’s disappearance, he said: “I managed to go look for the cows, around seven o’clock in the afternoon more or less, he (Tomás) was following the mine, he asked me where I was going and I told him I was going to look for the cows. He was all wet, so I told him that his mother would change his clothes and I waited for him on the distant bridge about 20 meters from the house ”.

“Once in the place, I realized that a cow was missing, because I have three and there were only two, so I walked about 200 or 300 meters more towards the interior of the farm, not finding the cow. Everything in the company of Tomás ”, is added in the statement.

In another statement, on the same day, he added: “At no time did he ask me to rest or to carry him, he always walked alone, holding my hand. At one point I decided to go down a slope, because I saw the missing cow grazing just his calf, but I did not want to go down with Tomás because it was a risky ravine for him since he had exploited the forest and he could fall. For the above, I told him to stay in the place and wait for me and he replied ‘ya great’.