National Police Chief Major General Jose Armando Polanco Gomez announced yesterday, Monday 29 April that together with the Justice Department they have processed three people implicated in the death of Colonel Julian Suarez Cordero during a student protest on the university campus on Tuesday 23 April. He said that there was strong evidence that they shot at the officer after he approached them to try and calm them down during last week’s protests. “Colonel Suarez Cordero was practically surrounded by the aggressors who were wearing bandanas and ski-masks to cover their faces but all have been identified by the investigators,” he said.
He revealed that the accused included a Fenatrano transport union member, a driver on Route 101, Eddy Bonilla, a.k.a. “Eddi Chimi” or “El guaguero” (the Bus Driver), who has a business selling food (chimichurri) near the UASD campus. The National District Permanent Attention court imposed a three-month preventive custody sentence in La Victoria Prison as a coercive measure yesterday. The measure was ordered by judge Alejandro Vargas after the defendant admitted having fired several shots into the air during the protests, as well as identifying 20-year old Wilson Daciel Javier Nolasco and 21-year old Hector Pichardo Hernandez as having shot at the colonel, as reported in Diario Libre.
The judge for Permanent Attention of the National District, Jose Alejandro Vargas, ordered three months of preventive custody at La Victoria jail for the two leaders of the dissolved Amin Abel Student Front (Felabel), who are accused of taking part in the incidents which resulted in the death of Police Colonel Julian Suarez Cordero.
The magistrate accepted the request of prosecutors Dante Castillo Medina and Candida Nunez, who said that the defendants should be sent to preventive custody and they pointed out that they had used firearms and fired them while masked in the university campus. On Friday, 26 April Judge Vargas ordered Hector Eduardo Pichardo Hernandez to the La Victoria jail. Meanwhile, on Sunday, he also imposed a coercive measure on Eddy Geovanny Bonilla Cabrera, a bus driver on Fenatrano route 101, and president of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) Street Vendors Association. Javier Nolasco said that the accusations against him are linked to the discovery of his ID card (cedula) during a search in the Cristo Rey neighborhood, in Pichardo Hernandez’s house, where he had fled to along with Omar Bido.