The Prosecutor’s Office will decide this Wednesday, September 9, whether or not to send the 8 members of the ‘Tren de Aragua’ prosecuted for the murder of professor Kevin Santiago Ángel, perpetrated on the night of May 20 in Bogotá.
The Investigative Unit of EL TIEMPO established that the prosecuting entity collected and presented sufficient material evidence to prove that the professor was led by deception to the apartment where he was murdered and tortured.
The first contact
It is already proven that the order to carry out the crime was given from La Dorada prison, Caldas, by the leader Ósmer Josué Castillo Urbaneja, who is being investigated for 19 homicides, conspiracy to commit a crime, and drug trafficking.
And investigations determined that the ‘bait’ to attract the teacher was Gacelis Nairobid Sojo Lira, alias Alondra, who contacted him through social networks, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, “to gain his trust.”
Indeed, in chats collected by the prosecuting entity and exclusively revealed by the Investigative Unit of EL TIEMPO, it was established that ‘Alondra’ began contacting the teacher approximately 11 days before the murder.
After several exchanges of personal messages, in one of the chats collected by investigators from the teacher’s computer, a woman’s invitation to the Santa Fe neighborhood, downtown Bogotá, was revealed.
However, the invitation was rejected by the teacher. At that time, he was continuing his program to keep young people away from recruitment and drug use, which had made him a target of the drug dealers of the ‘Tren de Aragua’.
But later, he agreed to meet the insistent and young woman in the Galán neighborhood.
The last messages and the transaction
The testimony of someone close to the teacher was key in the investigation: “I found a conversation on Santiago’s device. She told him her phone was going to die and sent him a location so he could get to that point,” the witness said.
And everything indicates that, after getting the teacher into a house, the criminals took his phone to impersonate him and send distracting messages.
For example, in a last conversation he had with his mother, Marta Garzón, at 6:20 p.m., Kevin replied to a message stating: “I’m at the gym.”
And there is another key message sent from the professor’s social media profile that investigators are tracking: “I’m sending two of my friends to pick up a motorcycle.”
The deleted messages
The message was sent to Vilmary Reyes, who runs a business called Vilbar, at 8:53 p.m. that same day.
“I received three other messages from Santiago’s profile, which had his photo. But he deleted them”, the woman said.
It is presumed that from that moment Kevin Santiago’s phone was already in the hands of the criminals, who later made bank transfers from the device.
The body of professor Kevin Santiago was found burned and dismembered hours later.
The woman and the leader
According to investigators, alias Alondra followed the orders of alias Ósmer and ‘Giovanny’, leaders of the ‘Tren de Aragua’ in the area known as ‘la 38’: “The woman was a sex worker and distributed drugs in that area.”
“‘Ósmer’ and ‘Giovanny’ must have known about this death; sometimes they stab them, other times they dismember and torture them,” a witness told the Prosecutor’s Office.
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The authorities intercepted alias Alondra’s phone after the crime, and it was established that she fled to the municipality of Pamplona, Norte de Santander, where she was captured.
INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
u.investigativa@eltiempo.com
@UinvestigativaET
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