Aldana Lorenz's transphobic murder: her mother did not assist her and her brother is charged
The Santa Fe court also charged the mother with child abandonment. Aldana was attacked on December 22, 2021, and admitted to Cullen Hospital on the 24th. No one investigated what happened until January 3, when she died.
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Aldana Lorenz, who died on January 3, was the first transgender person murdered in Argentina this year. The case is being investigated as a femicide, and the Santa Fe court this week charged her brother with the crime and ordered his pretrial detention. In addition, her mother is being investigated for "abandonment of a person" and the staff of the José María Cullen Hospital, who notified the police 10 days after the young woman was admitted with a head injury.
On December 22, 2021, Aldana was at the house she shared with her mother in the northern part of the city of Santa Fe. A few months earlier, while working as a prostitute, a client had run her over to avoid paying her. She suffered a head injury and a leg injury, requiring surgery. As a result, at the end of last year, she was still not feeling well and was trying to recover.
That day, her brother CAL arrived and they argued. According to the investigation, their nephews testified in a closed-circuit television interview that the uncle hit her on the head with a stick and then left. When their mother returned, the woman was lying on the floor, semi-conscious and unable to move, but she neither attended to her nor called anyone for help. “The woman is under investigation because, according to witness accounts, she allowed her daughter to lie on the floor for 48 hours without being able to get up on her own,” explained prosecutor Cecilia Minniti at the time of the indictment.
On December 24, Aldana's sister went to the house to check on her and found her in that condition, so she took her to the hospital. At Cullen Hospital, the woman reported that Aldana had been attacked by her brother; however, the staff did not notify the police or the Public Prosecutor's Office.
Ten days passed without the perpetrator of the attack being sought or the corresponding forensic examinations being carried out. On January 3, Aldana suffered multiple organ failure and died. Following her death, the investigation began, but her brother remained at large until last Thursday when he was arrested on a busy avenue in the north of the city.
“It was nice to spend time with her”
“Aldana was very funny, playful, and respectful. She was very family-oriented… We saw each other from time to time, because she was always there when I organized a family birthday party. It was nice to spend time with her; she was never sad,” says Marcela Lorenz, her cousin, in an interview with Presentes.
Marcela saw Aldana “a couple of days before the holidays,” on 12 de Octubre Avenue in Santa Fe. “It must have been around 8 or 9 at night. I was running errands and she was waiting for the bus at the bus stop, looking radiant. We just said hello,” she says about the last time they saw each other.
In the case
This week, the Special Prosecutor's Unit for Gender, Family and Sexual Violence (GEFAS) of the Regional Prosecutor's Office 1 of Santa Fe attributed the crime of femicide to her, in the courts of the provincial capital before Judge José Luis García Troiano.
“On the afternoon of the attack, the accused and the victim began arguing, and he struck the victim on the head with a blunt wooden object,” the Prosecutor's Office stated. “As a result of the attack, Lorens suffered a skull fracture,” it was reported.
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