Search for Tehuel: two sweeps without new leads and a raid
The Prosecutor's Office ordered new searches in San Vicente and Burzaco. But they yielded no new leads. A house was also raided.
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(UPDATE)
Tehuel de la Torre, a 22-year-old trans man, has been missing since March 11. He was last seen in Alejandro Korn (Buenos Aires province), heading to the home of Luis Alberto Ramos, who had promised him a job as a waiter at an event. Ramos and Alfredo Montes—the other man who was with him—are in custody but refuse to testify and reveal what happened to Tehuel. This morning, two simultaneous searches were carried out to try to obtain new leads. They were ordered by the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Karina Guyot, but so far they have not yielded any new information. There have been some new developments in the case in recent days, as the three-month mark since Tehuel was last seen approaches.
Starting at 9:00 a.m., police and prosecutors worked at two sites where urban waste is managed: an Eco Point in San Vicente and the Metropolitan Area Ecological Coordination State Company (CEAMSE) in Burzaco. The Eco Point houses a waste separation plant where local cooperatives work. Trucks carrying waste from San Vicente, Alejandro Korn, and Domselaar—three nearby towns—deliver it there. Alejandro Korn is home to the La Esperanza neighborhood, where Ramos and Montes, accused of obstruction of justice and perjury, live. Some residents in that area reported seeing suspicious activity involving a wheelbarrow and bags. The search in Burzaco was conducted based on the possible movement of waste deposited at the Eco Point's entrance.
This morning, around a hundred police officers from the DDI (Departmental Investigation Directorate), along with personnel from the Federal System for the Search of Missing and Lost Persons (Ministry of Security), prosecutors, forensic experts, and dogs trained to detect bloodstains, searched the property for any trace of him. While these individuals worked on the grounds, Norma, Tehuel's mother; Verónica, his sister, who was with her partner Federico; and the family's lawyer, Alejandro Valle, waited for news, seated around a table at the entrance to the property, which the media were not allowed to enter.
The operations stemmed from statements by witnesses who, before the search for Tehuel was made public, noticed suspicious waste arriving at the Eco Point, deposited a few meters from the entrance, alongside Route 16. This waste—according to information in the case file, reported to this media outlet by the lawyer and confirmed by judicial sources—has already been examined. But until now, the entire site had not been searched.
During the morning, officials from the provincial Ministry of Women and Diversity, as well as from the Ministry of Justice and the Gender Directorate of San Vicente, came to the scene to support the family.
How is the investigation progressing?
According to various sources who spoke to Presentes, the possibility that Tehuel's body was disposed of in garbage bags has been under investigation for some time.
“The only thing that could be smelled in Ramos’s house, according to the police, was bleach and mites. In other words, something happened in that house that was later covered up. They cleaned the house for two days,” Alejandro Valle, the Tehuel family’s lawyer, explained to Presentes. He also noted that furniture was given away and burned.
At the end of the search, Verónica, Tehuel's sister, approached the media present in San Vicente. She confirmed what she had just been told: the search yielded no new leads. The family's lawyer reported that the next location to be searched may be the Ceamse waste management facility in José León Suárez, where they will continue to investigate one of the most sordid leads, the one that has resonated most strongly in the neighborhood.
Norma, Tehuel's mother, doesn't usually speak to the media, but today she wanted to: “I have no words to describe how I feel. Every day is hard. All I want is for his body to be found, somehow.”
It is expected that in a few more days DNA samples will be taken from relatives of the young trans man in order to compare them with any evidence that may arise.
Yesterday, a raid was carried out on the home of Ramos's ex-partner in Dock Sud. There, the prosecutor's office seized backpacks and cell phones.
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