Colmenares case: 10 years later, the mother of Luis Andrés Colmenares on painful judicial process – Bogotá

10 years ago, the life of the Colmenares changed forever. Her eldest son died in the El Virrey park canal, in the north of Bogotá, in confusing facts and for which three young people were accused and there are still appeals to be resolved in court.

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But if someone’s entire existence was radically transformed, it was Oneida Escobar, the mother of Luis Andrés Colmenares, the 20-year-old student at the University of Los Andes who On the night of October 31, 2010, he fell into the pipe, where hours later he was found dead. His body had serious injuries that would have caused his death. With the tragic death of his son, Oneida also felt his life was passing away. He describes his pain as deep as if a good part of his body had been ripped off.

From that moment, this woman became the origin and “engine” of the long and controversial judicial process of which, like very few, thousands of stories have been published in newspapers and on radio and television. She did not accept, nor does she accept it today, that it was an accident, as was raised at the beginning.

She left her profession as a business administrator and devoted herself, like any researcher, to looking for evidence and elements that could help to clarify the truth about the death of “Luigi”, as she still fondly calls him.

He practically remained in the courts and tribunals pending memorials and decisions, to the point that, according to the account, judicial officials came to consider the case as a “chicharrón.” And it was not for less, she knows in detail the hundreds of pages that year after year were added to the file.

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Meanwhile, her husband, Luis Alfonso Colmenares, and her youngest son, Jorge, who is now a Bogotá councilor, helped her in this investigative work but, above all, they faced public controversies and were the ones who appeared in the media.

“My mom was in everything. The case was born by her and she is the one who insisted and pushed it; I carried photos and items that I was getting and attended all the hearings. The process got to where it is now because of her ”, recognizes Jorge, who like his parents and his brother was born in La Guajira in Colombia and studied in Bogotá.

According to the Colmenares ‘father at the time, in January of the following year, after returning from Villanueva, Oneida revealed that he had been dreaming of his son and that in one of those dreams he had told her:’the truth is in my body. ‘ It was then that, according to Luis Alfonso, they hired a private forensic doctor and the whole legal mess began. Oneida prefers not to talk about that, but he does prefer that the motivation for their fight has been that the truth of what happened is known.

In the case of the death of the seventh-semester industrial engineering student, Carlos Cárdenas faced an accusation as the perpetrator of the alleged homicide and was acquitted in first and second instance because there was insufficient evidence against him.

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With the same argument, Laura Moreno and Jessy Quintero -the first accused as improper co-author of homicide and the second for false testimony and cover-up of homicide- were acquitted in 2017, although their cases are on appeal and at any time a failure.

However, the Colmenares’ mother draws attention to the fact that at no point have the judges indicated that it was not a homicide, but rather that there is insufficient evidence against the accused. In fact, she assures that, as a mother and as the person who perhaps most knew Luis Andrés, she has the certainty that it was a murder.

“What the court said was that my son had been murdered, that the person could not be convicted because there was insufficient evidence, but at no time did he point out that he was innocent ”, assures this mother who has cried so much in these 10 years that, she says, her tears have dried.

But that is part of the process of spiritual healing and forgiveness in which she comes, with the help of a prayer group to Jesus and Mary, to which she has belonged for years, and which was accentuated after the hearings were over and she he was able to dedicate himself more “to the works of God.”

“Crying brings out all that pain and feeling that one has little saved, so healing comes,” says Oneida, who explains that this process has allowed him to return to being the person he was before Luis’ death, when in his heart there was no room for resentment or resentment, he laughed.

Remember that at the beginning of the process it was very difficult for him to attend a hearing and see the accused. “I would say to God: ‘Lord, help me to see them with your eyes, because I cannot see them with mine. Now I look at them and it is no longer with that anger. With my forgiveness, I am the one who heals ”.

In the process of rebuilding his life, Oneida started an old idea: create a foundation. That was when Luis Andrés and Jorge were still young, but with the death of their firstborn and, above all, with the judicial process.

“That was long before my son died. God had put it in my heart that I was going to have a foundation. I did not know of what. But with the process for the murder of my son and seeing what one suffers in the courts, the mothers with many difficulties and the young people with so many drug problems, I already know what the foundation is going to be and also in honor to my son. It is named after Luis Andrés Colmenares Escobar “.

The objective, she says, is to support mothers like her who have suffered a tragedy due to the death of one of their loved ones and must face a long judicial process. “I don’t want the same things to happen that I happened in the Prosecutor’s Office. We seek to support them in the legal and psychological part and, perhaps more importantly, in the spiritual, that they can have people to talk to, to hug, to whom they can tell. When you lose a child, what you want is to talk and talk about your child. ”

And as she moves forward with her idea and the healing process, she says that her youngest son, Jorge, has been instrumental in her recovery. But in addition, his election as a Bogotá councilor in October 2019, generated “a lot of happiness” in the midst of so much pain.

“It was a happiness, a pride and an awakening to know that Jorge also needed my support,” insists the mother of the Colmenares.

This leads her to remember that in life, Luis Andrés said that his younger brother was going to be “great”, because of his way of being and humanitarian.