First Lieutenant Juan Mercedes Vasquez would have graduated with honors from law school soon. Instead he was murdered on Sunday and buried on 9 December 2019, victim of the domestic violence he tried to remedy in the Los Rosales neighborhood in East Santo Domingo.
What is known is that Mercedes removed his anti-bullet vest when entering the house where 40-year old Cristian Eugenio Medina Mendez had barricaded himself in a relative’s house with several members of the family. Mercedes was leading the hostage rescue team when he was shot.
As reported, the Swat officer took off his vest and helmet to enter the house and try to calm the man. When Medina realized Mercedes was a policeman, he shot him, is the explanation offered by Eidi, the eldest daughter of Cristian Medina, the man who barricaded himself in his relatives’ house.
Wendy Mercedes said her brother died doing police work that was his passion since joining when he was 17 years old. Mercedes said that her brother gave himself body and soul to the police ranks.
Medina Mendez next died of a shot in the head. An autopsy is expected to determine if he committed suicide after killing the police officer or was killed by a gunshot by the Swat team. The body of Medina Mendez was taken to the Institute of Forensic Sciences (Inacif) for the autopsy.
The funeral was also dedicated to two other officers, Julio César Caminero Franco and Antonio Guevara Félix, who had died in a traffic accident when headed to their assignments in Los Frailes.
The director of the Police Ney Aldrin Bautista Almonte said at the wake: “For us it was a day of mourning because we lost a good officer, an officer who had training (…), an officer of the Swat team with training, with knowledge, with skills,” said the Police Chief.
He also mourned the death of two other officers, one of which he said had worked as an escort with him. “For us it is very painful,” he said.
“We sent them to take a breathalyzer test, to take a psychological test to establish what could have caused the death of two police officers and a third to be injured,” Bautista Almonte said after journalists approached him and told him that the officers were presumed to be driving under the influence of alcohol.
According to the Traffic Safety and Land Transport Agency (Digesett), the driver of the vehicle, identified as Milton Fernando Tamariz Sosa, ran over the agents at Km 20 of the Las Americas highway in front of the Las Americas Free Zone. The driver maintains he lost control of the car. He is under arrest.
The victims were identified as sergeant Julio César Caminero Franco and corporal Juan Antonio Guevara, and the injured man is private Audi Mejía Tejeda, who is in a serious condition at the Dario Contreras Trauma Hospital.
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10 December 2019