Rosario, the capital of shootings: there are more and more attacks and an unprecedented prosecutor’s office in the country

So far this year there was a shooting at a police station. Another to a municipal health center. Two others in the prison complex and at the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Agency. Shooting attacks on private homes and businesses. And the last and, whose news transcended the borders of the country, were the 14 bullets that the front of the supermarket of Lionel Messi’s father-in-law received last Thursday at dawn. A crime that has been increasing in recent years in Rosario and forced the creation of a specific fiscal unit to investigate them.

In the last report on Registered Crime from the Observatory of Public Policies of the government of Santa Fe, the shootings investigated in Rosario from 2015 to 2021 are counted. Between the two extremes of those seven years there was an 83 percent increase in these events, since it went from 913 to 1,669 cases.

The lowest record is that of 2016 (869), and from there the shootings begin to increase and exceed the floor of one thousand events per year. The greatest concentration of events occurred in 2021, when four shooting attacks per day were recorded. Meanwhile, from 2019 to the last year of the report, shootings increased by 44%.

And so far in 2023, the situation has increased. “In January and February of this year we are having between 30 and 40 entries from shootings and extortions per day. But this is not the correct figure, because many people do not report it out of fear,” prosecutor Franco Carbone explained to TN in mid-February.

“The serious thing about this is that many of the people who are intimidated carry out a legal activity where sometimes they do not report it because the criminal groups come and tell them: ‘Pay to be able to work.’ Then there may be other motives, but a majority are intimidated people who have nothing to do with the world of crime,” the prosecutor contextualized.

Due to this escalation of events, in 2020 a fiscal unit was created so that the shootings that took place in that city are concentrated there and investigated in depth. Thus, by decision of the Regional Prosecutor María Eugenia Iribarren in September of that year, the Unit specialized in Shootings was born, in which the prosecutors Valeria Haurigot, Pablo Socca and Federico Rébola worked.

This last prosecutor is the one investigating the shooting attack that occurred last Thursday morning at 2500 Lavalle Street against the front of the Único supermarket that is owned by the father of Antonela Roccuzzo, wife of the captain of the Argentine National Team. The two “shooters”, who stopped in front of the store and shot fourteen times, also left a sign in the place where it said: “Messi we are waiting for you. Javkin is a narco, he is not going to take care of you…”. This last reference is to the mayor of Rosario.

So far this year, there have been several shootings, and their targets were private homes and state entities. There were even unusual and alarming cases: on February 6, a person on a bicycle passed by Police Station 32 in the Godoy neighborhood, in the western zone, and took out a weapon and started shooting. He left and no one chased him.

Five days earlier, another police station had been attacked. At that time it was sub-station 26 of Villa Gobernador Gálvez. They shot at the door. The following day the Rosario Penitentiary Complex was shot at, on 27 de Febrero street at 7800. Then the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Agency was attacked with seven shots.

On February 8, the Municipal Center of the Southwest District was attacked, which led to the suspension of an act that the mayor had planned. All this escalation of violence ended that same day with the resignation of the security minister of Santa Fe.

After this latest attack, prosecutor Haurigot analyzed the situation in Rosario: “We have more analysis of gangs, we know how they are made up, who works in each territory, how they recruit people. What cannot be done is to ensure that this criminal prosecution, that sentence, is prevented by a de facto element, the violence that comes out of prison and the ease they have to recruit more people to continue doing the same”. And she sentences: “More crimes are committed from prison, violence in the street intensifies.”

Businesses and private properties were also attacked. This week, the decision that a teacher had to make when he was mistakenly shot in front of the property where he rents was revealed. It is that after the shooting, the attackers abandoned a sign addressed to “Arami”. So the woman posted a message on the door, on the recommendation of the police, according to her account. “I am not Arami. They were wrong! My name is Cecilia, I am a teacher and I have been renting here for a year and a half. I have two babies! ”, she reads the sign stuck on a gray door pierced by bullets.

Sixty crimes in 2023

Three people were murdered in a few hours in the Santa Fe city of Rosario, in independent events, but with the same method of the hitman-type attack. There are already 60 homicides so far this year in the Department of Rosario.

Around 11 p.m. on Friday, a businessman from Rosario was killed with at least ten shots when he arrived at his home, located on Pasaje Independencia and Vera Mujica.

The victim, identified as Wilson Daniel Silveira (52), was lying in the driver’s seat of a Ford Ranger truck, in which he had arrived at his home.

The man owned a well-known fast food cart located at 3100 Pellegrini, a few blocks from his home, and was also engaged in buying and selling cars.

An hour before that homicide, Eugenio Domingo Campos (38) was assassinated with three bullets on a public highway, in the vicinity of Rodríguez and Biedma streets, in the south of Rosario.

The third crime occurred in the early hours of this Saturday morning. There they riddled Maximiliano Daniel Bazán (28).