The minor, 17 years old, did not have the opportunity to flee from her attackers. A pair of hitmen on a motorcycle arrived at the intersection of 39th Street and Carrera 25B, in the El Rodeo neighborhood, with the aim of apparently murdering the victim’s brother in the middle of a crowd, in this area of eastern Cali , located in commune 12 of the city.
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The shot left the minor in agony, who died some time later while being treated at the Primitivo Iglesias public hospital. One of the hitmen was also a minor, who tried to flee from the authorities, when a ‘Padlock Plan’ was activated to capture the murderers of El Rodeo. According to the commander of the Cali Metropolitan Police, Colonel Carlos Oviedo, this minor did not hesitate to confront the uniformed men with bullets.
The alleged murderer was injured in the confrontation and was arrested because he was a minor before being taken to the Primitivo Iglesias hospital, but his accomplice managed to escape.
According to the Public Force, everything would point to a settling of accounts and retaliation in an area where minors are used by criminal gangs to commit crimes, be it micro-trafficking, extortion and even murders, including, of other minors when they get involved in the world. underworld.
In Cali alone, the number of murdered minors was 20 with ages between 6 and 17 years old until last Sunday, June 23. That same day, a 16-year-old teenager was murdered. He lived in the depressed neighborhood of Llano Verde, where children and other minors walk around in flip-flops, kicking a ball with the distant dream of escaping poverty by playing soccer.
In Valle del Cauca, there are nearly 50 murders of minors, including the two children in Candelaria, collateral victims of a hitman attack against the father of one of them. The children were Yeiko David Arias, 6 years old, and Milan Sánchez, 8.
The murder happened on June 3, when the children were traveling in a ‘pirate’ car, as informal transport is popularly called. They were going to an area of the Poblado Campestre, in Candelaria.
Four men on two motorcycles followed the children who were with an adult. The unknown men were heavily armed and fired shots.
The commander of the Cali Metropolitan Police, Colonel Carlos Oviedo, explained that the children and the adult were in the informal transport car. “Some people who were traveling in a vehicle were attacked by a firearm. They were immediately transferred to a health care center, but due to the severity of the injuries, both children died in said health care center,” said Oviedo, at that time. .
Only between January and April of this 2024, the National Institute of Legal Medicine counted 43 of these homicides in the Valley for a daily average of four and five minors murdered, so the department will complete two years with the not very honorable first position of be the one with the highest homicides of children and adolescents in the entire country. Of the 44 cases, 39 were men and the remaining four were women. Among the causes are settling of accounts, retaliation, hitman attacks directed at them, but also at family members and domestic violence.
They continue Atlántico with 18 cases, all men, and Cauca with 14 more. But if in the Valley, minors are murdered, above all, due to settling scores, retaliation and domestic violence, in In neighboring Cauca, the armed conflict would be one of the main factors, since more recruitment of minors by armed groups, among dissidents and narco-paramilitaries, is being reported there.
Argelia, the municipality agitated in its rural area, especially in the El Plateado district, which has become a stronghold for ‘Iván Mordisco’ of the ‘Central Staff’ of the FARC dissidents because it is in a strategic corridor to take drugs and weapons to the Pacific through the Micay River canyon, It is one of the most violent for minors. Of those 14 homicides in Cauca, some of the victims were children who are usually forced to shoot weapons for someone else’s war. Three homicides of minors occurred in Argelia and two more in El Tambo, a municipality that borders Argelia. The other homicides of minors in Cauca occurred because they were victims of crime, adult fights and domestic violence.
Also There is Patía with the most violent deaths of minors, neighboring the first two municipalities in Cauca, with three more reports. There is no gender discrimination, boys and girls, and adolescents are murdered.
But curiously, in Nariño, another department affected by the conflict, the number of murdered minors is very low. Two during the first four months of this year.
El Valle surpasses Antioquia, which had 13 murders of minors, and Bogotá, 12. In the other municipalities of Cundinamarca there were 12 more homicides. This means that adding the capital of the Republic and Cundinamarca, the Valley doubles this region of the interior of the national territory. All of Cundinamarca and Bogotá reach second place with 22 reports of murdered minors.
Not even the three departments of the The Coffee Axis has so many deaths, since in Quindío there were four homicides of minors, between January and April of this year, added to two more in Risaralda (a man and a woman) and one more in Caldas.
In Santander There were six until April of this year and in Norte de Santander, another three. In Quindío there were four of these homicides.
Last year, Valle del Cauca ranked first in those murders of children and adolescents throughout the country with 130 reports, of which, 107 were men and 23 were women.
In that 2023 There were 73 homicides of minors in Antioquia. There are still 48 in Bogotá alone, while in the rest of Cundinamarca 16 more cases were recorded, all according to Forensic Medicine autopsy reports.
In that same last year, Cauca had 44 homicides of minors and Atlántico, another 40. In addition, there were 28 in Santander and 23 more in Norte de Santander. In Nariño there were 15, according to Forensic Medicine itself.
In 10 months of 2023, according to Forensic Medicine, 103 violent murders were reported in the Valley. Between January and August 2022 there were more than 50 of these deaths.
The figure for those 10 months was almost double the amount of these murders in Antioquia (59 reports) and surpassed Bogotá in 67 cases (36). Cauca (35) was still on the list.
Meanwhile, the Cali Security Observatory reported that between January and October 28, 2023, there were 375 homicides of minors and young people in the capital of Valle del Cauca. In 2018, 96 homicides of minors were recorded; 93, in 2019; 70, in 2020, and 57 in 2021.
Among the cases that gave indications of how minors would be used by criminal groups and criminal gangs is that of a teenager who was 14 years old. He was murdered on November 23, when the minor was followed by two hitmen on a motorcycle. He walked through the streets of Yumbo, the industrial municipality of Valle and then arrived in the Lleras neighborhood to meet some friends. It was there, in the middle of a public road, that the strangers accelerated their pace and shot the teenager repeatedly.
Although at first there was talk of the theft of a cell phone, the Police indicated that there was no such theft, but that the hitmen expressly came to attack the teenager. Authorities are investigating whether there was any retaliation.
But those close to the minor’s family were so surprised, in the midst of their pain. The teenager received one of the impacts to the head, which caused brain damage and precipitated his death.
According to the Police, there is a marked tendency to exploit minors to commit crimes in the city, including murders, injuries, carrying weapons and drug trafficking, also exposing them to not only becoming perpetrators, but also victims. of murders.
That would be the case of the murder of a minor, 17 years old, when at noon on April 27, 2023 she was leaving her classes at a school on the hillside of Cali. A man followed her and shot her twice in the head with a silencer. She spoke of a reckoning and microtrafficking. This crime happened in the humble Alto Jordán neighborhood.
CAROLINA BOHORQUEZ
EL TIEMPO correspondent
Cali
