The senator for Santiago Rodriguez, Dario Gomez was gunned down at a friend’s house on 11 December 2001, later dying of the gunshot wounds inflicted that night. On Saturday, magistrate Alexis Geraldino sentenced the men who shot Gomez to 30-year jail terms, the maximum allowed under Dominican penal law. The prosecutor also asked for the accused to pay the court costs, and the joint civil prosecutor requested a compensation payment of RD$5 million each. The convicted killers are Ramon Antonio Taveras, aka El Gringo; Ernesto Antonio Melendez, aka El Chino; Pedro Urbano Pina, aka Kelly; Domingo Minaya Jimenez, aka El Mago. The magistrate reduced the civil penalty to RD$5.0 million to each of the parties in the civil suit, including the victim’s mother, his driver, a sister and the lawyers themselves.
Nonetheless, as reported in most of today’s newspapers, Dario Gomez’s family is not satisfied, and is insisting that the Justice Department continue investigating the case until it finds the people who ordered the murder. The former senator’s sister, Celeste Gomez, who replaced her brother in his senate seat, told reporters that she was convinced that the instigators had not been identified. She said that she found it illogical that four individuals would decide to rob a modest house in the Vista Hermosa neighborhood of Santo Domingo where the senator for Santiago Rodriguez just happened to be visiting. She reminded the journalists that her brother was active in the legislative processes attacking drug trafficking, and tax evasion, as well as pushing for faster extradition processes for criminals. According to the report in Listin Diario, Aura Celeste Gomez told reporters that she believed that the investigators are aware of the identity of the people behind her brother’s murder.