“When there is justice there will be peace”: two years and five months after the cyclist Santiago Jaramillo was run over, witnesses and experts will appear in court for the second time

Gonzalo Jaramillo’s eyes fill with tears and his voice breaks when he remembers his son Santiago. At times he is invaded by impotence, despair, but under no circumstances, he says, will he abandon the legal fight that he undertook two years and five months ago in search of justice for his only son who died at the age of 33 after being run over by a truck.

The event occurred at 11:30 p.m. on August 17, 2020. Santiago, who liked cycling, was pedaling along Samborondón avenue with his friend Marco Caizapanta when at the entrance to Mocolí Island the driver of the vehicle rammed them. .

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After the event, the driver left the site in the car. Santiago died at the scene of the accident, while his partner was badly injured, but survived after being hospitalized.

In addition to the pain of having lost his son, Gonzalo carries the cross of a lengthy judicial process. And recently, on Wednesday, January 11, the date on which the final verdict of the defendant’s trial hearing was expected to be known, Christian AG received discouraging news in its pursuit of justice.

The multi-competent court of Samborondón, where the case is taking place, has a new owner: Carlos López Vulgarín, who, having not carried out the process, suspended the hearing to soak up the matter.

And six days later, according to the judicial system, the judge ruled declare the nullity of the proceeding from the summons to the trial hearing. This implies, among other things, the appearance for the second time of witnesses and experts that had already been completed in at least six sessions.

The prosecuting attorney in this case must coordinate with all those who must appear at the trial hearing.

“We are already 29 months since my son passed away. The process has been passed, after the investigations carried out by the Prosecutor’s Office, three judges have passed. On January 11, the last judge arrived, the third judge, who is going to take charge of the Santiago investigation. With the second judge, we had practically finished the entire process of hearing the witnesses and the experts, but now this third judge tells us that he has not heard anything and that the testimonies have to be redone (…). We are going back to zero again in this case”, says Gonzalo Jaramillo.

And he adds that at least a dozen people must appear, including witnesses and experts. The delays in the process hit him, yes, but they do not diminish his hope of finding justice, since “when there is justice there will be peace.”

“I am not going to leave this (the case) until justice is done with my son. I’m not looking for revenge, no. What I’m looking for is justice, when there is justice there will be peace”, stresses the man who still keeps things from Santiago intact in the house where they both lived, in a development in the La Aurora parish, jurisdiction of Daule.

Santiago Jaramillo was a cyclist known in Samborondón and Guayaquil for rescuing the animals he found on his way. His father remembers him as a responsible young man and lover of sports activities; he played basketball, soccer and liked to play the guitar.

“A virtue that he had: he never liked to drink (liquor),” says Gonzalo, his retired father who visits him weekly in the cemetery where the cyclist was buried.

At the beginning of the legal process, the prosecutor in the case, Reinaldo Cevallos, said that it was probable that the driver of the truck had ingested alcohol before the accident, but that could not be verified because he was not arrested in flagrante delicto (in the first 24 hours of the crime) because he left the site.

Initially, it was not even known who was the cause of the event. However, later through videos and photos, he found the person implicated that that day he was driving his mother’s truck, whose hood had already been changed, evidencing the accident, according to the court file.

Christian AG, the defendant in this case, is a 22-year-old young man who, according to the Migration document cited in the Judiciary system, left the country on August 20, 2020 and returned on September 21 of that same year.

On February 26, 2021, at the hearing to formulate charges, Judge Larissa Ibarra Lamilla, of the Multi-competent Judicial Unit of Samborondón, ordered preventive detention.

But on May 14 of that year, in a hearing to review the ruling, Judge Humberto Barzola granted alternative measures, that the defendant appear from Monday to Friday before the secretary of the Prosecutor’s Office. He also ordered the placement of an electronic shackle and a ban on leaving the country.

Already in March 2022, the change in precautionary measures for the defendant was accepted and his presentation to the Prosecutor’s Office was arranged on Tuesdays and Fridays. The ban on leaving the country was maintained, but it was made clear that given that the National Service for Comprehensive Care for Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders (SNAI) did not have shackles, it was impossible to comply with this security measure. moment.

José Ampuero, lawyer for Christian AG, mentioned that at the beginning of the tax investigation they filed a request to benefit from the abbreviated procedure, that is, to accept the accused act in exchange for a reduction in sentence, but that was not accepted by the prosecutor. . Therefore, the trial has been processed in ordinary procedure.

The legal professional considers it as a “terrible delay” for ls or changes of judges in an untimely manner as in this case. He has acted in the process of administration of justice that the Judiciary orders transfers from the previous investigation until the hearing for the formulation of charges and resumed the case in the trial stage.

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“The discomfort is for all procedural subjects. The prosecutor complained, the lawyer for the private prosecution also complained about this situation that depends, if not on the provincial director of Guayas, on the Council of the Judiciary, which orders the transfers. And of course, as the technical defense of the defendant, we are also distressed by this sudden change of judges, because there is a waste of effort, of important time”, Ampuero refers.

Christian AG, according to his lawyer, is a 22-year-old who works and studies at the same time. “He has faced the process and his intention, everyone’s intention, is to be able to end this trial and that justice resolve what it has to resolve, in law,” said the defender. (YO)