Within the multiple procedures being carried out by the team of (now) six prosecutors investigating the murder of the three senior non-commissioned officers of the Carabineros, murdered early Saturday morning in Antiquina (Biobío Region), a key is the review of other facts previous ones that could have similarities and one of them is almost carbon copy: the double homicide of two forest patrollers, who were murdered in February 2022 in Carahue, La Araucanía Region, although very close to Antiquina.
On February 20 of that year, at around 8:00 p.m., while fighting a forest fire on the “El Encanto” farm, owned by Mininco, the brigade members heard detonations similar to gunshots, after which, shortly distance, the bodies of two lifeless forest patrollers were found.
They were Alejandro Carrasco Mellafe, 30 years old, and Benjamín Bustos Manríquez, 23. Both had been riddled with bullets inside the truck in which they were patrolling, one of them receiving five shots and the other four, all in the area. upper part of the body and head, like the carabineros murdered in the commune of Cañete.
Unlike what happened to the police, however, they were shot inside the vehicle in which they were traveling, with no signs of resistance. Everything indicates that they were surprised and that both workers, belonging to the security company First Security, were executed in cold blood, in a manner very similar to what happened with the uniformed police officers.
Likewise, another element that is common to both cases is the disappearance of the film record. In the Carahue crime, the memory card was stolen from the camera carried in the vehicle and, in the Antiquina crime, the GoPro camera carried by one of the uniformed men disappeared.
In both cases there have been no political demands (to date). Although not all of the attacks that have occurred in the Mapuche conflict zone have been adjudicated, it is normal that after a violent action its perpetrators claim responsibility, either through banners, pamphlets or communications. Otherwise, as indicated by a police source, “the action stops making sense, since the meaning of any action of this type is that it is known who committed it and why.”
It should be noted that in the case of Carahue there have been no arrests so far.
By the way, there are also differences between both cases and perhaps the main one is that in the crime of the police, at this point there is no longer any doubt that the three were executed in cold blood, disarmed and stripped of their respective personal protection elements, such as ballistic helmets and bulletproof vests. Furthermore, it is presumed that they could have been executed with their own weapons, the whereabouts of which are unknown to date.
As for the investigations, they are focused on the exact determination of the location of the event and on the people who were in its vicinity, including those close to Carlos Antihuen Riquelme, 37 years old, who is being formalized for violations of the laws of Drugs and Weapons, which is why the police came that morning to carry out a control of the night house arrest measure that affects him.
The new team
Yesterday, the Regional Prosecutor of La Araucanía, Roberto Garrido, who on Monday was in charge of the investigation, by decision of the National Prosecutor, spent a good part of the day working at the Public Order Control Police Station (COP) of Los Álamos, together with personnel from the OS-9 of the Carabineros and other specialized units, while forming the new work team that will address the issue, which was ultimately made up of six prosecutors.
Garrido will be supported by the High Complexity Prosecutor Carlos Bustos, who – as reported The counter– is the prosecutor who investigated the murders of three police officers in La Araucanía (carabineros Eugenio Naín and Francisco Benavides, as well as PDI officer Luis Morales) and four prosecutors from the Biobío Region will also work on the team, two of them who were already in the case: the chief prosecutor of Cañete, Danilo Ramos, and the chief prosecutor of Criminal Analysis and Investigative Focus, Michelangelo Bianchi. They are joined by the chief prosecutor of Lebu, Johnny Cares, and the deputy prosecutor of Talcahuano, Mario Elgueta, who in 2008 (when he was prosecutor of Cañete) was the target of an attack in the Puerto Choque sector (20 kilometers south of Antiquina).
In that incident – for which Héctor Llaitul and other leaders of the Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco (CAM) were later convicted – Elgueta suffered minor injuries, but three detectives who were part of his delegation ended up with serious injuries.