TO nine years since the death of Alejandro Cohnthe Justice ordered this Friday condemn 3 of the 6 doctors at the San Isidro hospital accused of culpable homicide and theft of evidence. Thus, Marcelo Toro Solano received a sentence of 3 years and 6 months in prison and 7 years of disqualification; Ana Sánchez, 1 year and 8 months of conditional imprisonment and five years of disqualification from practicing medicine; and Carla Setti, 1 year and 8 months of conditional execution and 5 years of disqualification.
For the rest of the professionals who came to the sentence with accusations, María Quiroga, María Seijo and Martín Montagnano, there were no convictions. As for Marina Vogelin, Maximiliano Ragazzoli and Darío Campos, the prosecution had dropped the accusation during the arguments.
Mariano Cohn, the victim’s brother, listened to the verdict from the first rows of the courtroom, as he did throughout the oral process. At the end of the trial, prosecutor Diego Molina Pico had decided to withdraw the charge of stealing evidence against all of them and not to charge Vogelin, Ragazzoli or Campos with homicide. In the case of Montagna, the prosecution did not decide to charge, but the plaintiff, in the hands of Juan Carlos García Dietze, did.
In the defense arguments, the lawyers shared cross accusations and targeted the nurses who assisted the 35-year-old man who was urgently transferred to the San Isidro hospital on July 27, 2015 due to decompensation linked to his diabetes.
“For nine years we have been complaining, asking for justice, doing everything in my power to bring to light the scandalous nature of the situation and everything my brother had to suffer. I want this to serve as precedent, as jurisprudence so that it is not repeated, to represent in some way all the people who may have gone through a similar situation and have not had the possibility of reaching this stage,” Mariano told him. Cohn to Clarion.
The filmmaker Mariano Cohn, prior to the reading of the verdict for the death of his brother Alejandro. Photo: Luciano Thieberger
“They acted like beasts”
For the multi-award-winning filmmaker, the people who cared for his brother “acted like beasts,” even those who were acquitted during the judicial process: “My family, my brother’s friends and I have chosen to act at all times as civilized people, which is the complete opposite of what these have done Nine doctors who have acted like beasts at all times,” he assured.
And he continued: “Those who were accused, those who are accused, without exception, have acted like beasts. When they treated my brother, after treating him and during the trial, they all acted under a pact of silence. And we choose to act like civilized people. That’s why “I trust that there has to be an exemplary sentence and resolution.”
Mariano Cohn’s family withdrew the civil action and, as they maintained, they seek to prevent “these things from happening again.” They assured that, beyond the sentence, the “demand for justice remains intact.” Regarding the judicial process, the filmmaker said that “At times it was desperate” because “we witnesses were questioned but the accused did not speak.”
From the beginning of the trial, the Cohn family wanted to “break the pact of silence” that, they claimed, would allow them to know what happened: “The doctors who caused all that damage to my brother were all sitting behind a wall of lawyers. None declared, they maintained the pact of silence, along with the hospital officials. It was desperate, they asked us questions, they interrogated us, and those who were guilty, the accused, did not speak. They asked us and they remained silent.”
Regarding the chain of responsibilities, the victim’s brother also blamed to the then mayor of San Isidro, Gustavo Possein charge of the health center where the events occurred.
“The trial served to corroborate everything that we had been denouncing, that they abandoned my brother, that they did not treat him, that they did not hydrate him, that they did not give him a serum and that When they realized something was happening to him, he was already convulsing.“There was no oxygen reaching his brain, there were no trained personnel to intubate someone, there was no type of protocol, that guard was adrift because the boss was not there,” Cohn questioned.
Alejandro Cohn, who was a type 1 insulin-dependent diabetic patient, felt ill on July 27, 2015, at around 8:15 p.m. and vomited in the street, requiring emergency assistance. Dr. Marcelo Rodrigo Toro Solano went to the scene in an ambulance and, without providing any primary care, took him to San Isidro Hospital, where he arrived at 9:19 p.m.
According to the reconstruction, “Alexander remained in Box A of the hospital emergency room without any medical attention from the doctors on duty -Dr. Toro Solano and doctors Sánchez and Settin- nor assistance from the nurses. The lack of care complicated Alejandro’s health condition, which led him to decompensate – after 9:47 p.m. -, go into shock with deterioration of the sensorium and seizure, for which he was taken to the emergency room. “shock room of the guard”.
Always according to the prosecution, while in that sector of the hospital “he was not properly assisted by doctors María Soledad Seijo and María Viviana Quiroga, who limited themselves to treat him with a manual resuscitator, which further aggravated Alejandro’s condition, who went into cardiorespiratory arrest. As a result of all this, Alejandro suffered brain death, which was finally determined on July 29, 2015 at 8, the cause of his death being hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy.
According to the investigation, at that point they recorded the absence of security cameras, The shock room report book was lost and the nursing sheets with the record for that Saturday were torn out of the minute book.
The autopsy determined that the body had a cervical vertebra dislocation with bone marrow rupturefracture-dislocation of thoracic vertebra, fracture of right clavicle and fracture of lateral arches.
Molina Pico requested that a new investigation be initiated into the actions of Erlith Valverde and Nancy Flores, both nurses. It was because of his statements, whose contradictions the defense lawyers also highlighted.
