Between life and death: this is one of the injured after riots in El Codito, Usaquén

In total, six were injured after a traffic operation, which went wrong. They are all being treated in a health center. Civilians were injured by firearms. One of them was hit in the head. Authorities and the community request an investigation to clarify the facts.

A chaos was lived at the end of the afternoon in the El Codito neighborhood, located in the town of Usaquén, north of Bogotá. An escape, a chase, run over, shots and riots, all the product of a transit operation against informal transport in the town, which ended badly.

The final balance: six injured people, of whom four were policemen, run over by a vehicle, and two civilians, who were hit by firearms. One of them is between life and death, after receiving a blow to the head.

According to the statements of the Bogotá Police Commander, Óscar Gómez, it all started due to a police procedure. “Some policemen were doing controls on illegal transport, in one of those, a driver is required and he initially attacks a Police and flees. There is a pursuit and the vehicle is intercepted in the upper part and this person throws the vehicle at the uniformed men, ”said the commander. It was in this action that the four policemen were injured.

>>> Read: Shooting in El Codito, Usaquén, north of Bogotá

The other part of the story was complemented by councilor Diego Cancino (Alianza Verde), through his social networks, who after gathering testimonies told that, indeed, at 6:30 pm, people who transport the inhabitants in a were arrested and it seems that their car was going to be immobilized.

“Some testimonies say that they tried to escape and in this flight they ran over a uniformed man, but the relatives deny that version. The truth is that in the middle of the persecution, the policemen began to shoot. At this moment there are two injured, among them a 16-year-old boy with a skull wound and who is in an induced coma ”.

The outrage caused by the situation among the population of the neighborhood ended in riots, which is why agents from the Anti-Riot Squad were sent to the site. The injured civilians were transferred to the Simón Bolívar hospital and, according to the information provided by Gómez, one of them is in critical condition.

Of the four injured police officers, one is being treated at the Simón Bolívar Hospital, another is at the Fundación Cardioinfantil and two were referred to the Central Police Hospital. The institution asked the Prosecutor’s Office to initiate an investigation to clarify the facts.

Faced with the facts, Councilor Cancino said: “This is a new case of abuse and police crime. Illegalities must be punished and prosecuted. But here there are two things: it is evident that this activity must be regularized, of people who need to work, and the second is that no illegality justifies this level of violence, this reaction as infamous as that of the Police, ”said Cancino.

For his part, the Secretary of Government of Bogotá, Luis Ernesto Gómez, was at the scene of the events and also spoke. “We want to tell the inhabitants of El Codito that here is the institutional framework: the CTI, the Police and the coexistence teams are there to try to clarify what happened,” he said. Gómez concluded his intervention by asking the residents of the area to be patient and wait for the result of the investigation.