For the first time, the Justice of Corrientes admitted the possibility that Loan Peña (5) has been the victim of a kidnapping. That is why the Office of the Prosecutor for Human Trafficking and Exploitation of the Public Ministry of the Nation has already intervened.
Juan Carlos Castillo and Guillermo Barry said that by logic and common sense when analyzing the evidence, “the possibility that the little boy who has been missing since the afternoon of Thursday, June 13, when he left with five other children and three adults in search of oranges on a property that is 600 meters from their grandmother’s house, in the rural area of 9 de Julio, in Corrientes.
As part of the investigation, prosecutors ordered a series of tests. On the one hand, they already have 1,600 sheets in their possession with the result of sweeping cell phone antennas in the area, and an expert report was also requested on the phones that were seized from the detainees and their families. A Luminol test will also be carried out on two seized cars that also belong to the suspects who are in pretrial detention.
In a official statement, the prosecutors detailed that “in hours the results” of those tests will be known. In addition, they said that in the reconstruction of the route that Loan took and the path he took to return to his father, in the Algarrobal area, the stories of the other five boys there were “coincidences of mechanics, schedules and other aspects about Loan “He took a different path than the one that led to his grandmother’s house.” The prosecutors detailed that this testing measure was carried out with the support of the Victim Care and Assistance Unit, the Forensic Psychology Corps and the Public Guardianship Ministry.
They explained that in the next few hours the search will be expanded, but they believe that by logic and common sense when analyzing the evidence, the possibility that he may have been a victim of abduction should also be considered and that is why they are already working with the Prosecutor’s Office specialized in trafficking.
Barry maintained that in either of the two hypotheses – that he was lost or kidnapped – the three adults who were last with Loan would be the criminal responsible. “For now it is abandonment of the person, but that figure can get worse. To unravel the fact, we await the Luminol expert report on their vehicles (in search of traces of human blood) and an analysis of the sweep of antennas, which are more than 1,600 sheets, to which we must add that of the kidnapped cell phones,” Barry explained. .
The Justice ordered the preventive detention of the three adults who were with Loan and five other boys when the little boy mysteriously disappeared. The minors who testified at the Gesell Chamber said that the boy told them that she would return to her father, and she walked away from the group.
For prosecutors, the responsibility for caring for the minor fell on the uncle-in-law, Bernardino Antonio Benítez, 37, a rural worker in the area. He is the partner of Laudelina Peña, who was notified by the man that the boy had gone missing last Thursday afternoon. The other accused of the crime of abandonment of person are Daniel “Fierrito” Ramírez (49), a friend of Bernardino; and his partner, Mónica Millapi (35).
Since last Friday, hundreds of police, gendarmes, soldiers and volunteers have been searching the El Algarrobal area. In all that time they could barely find one of the boy’s sneakers half buried in the mud, in the opposite direction to which he had to walk to return to his grandmother’s house.
