Judge Yenny Cecilia Muñoz, of the Fifth Court of Instruction of the province of Santo Domingo, ordered a corporal of the National Police and a motorcycle driver, to trial for the murder of architect, 35-year old Leslie Massiel Rosado Marte. Rosado was shot to the head after a confusing traffic accident that occurred when she had left a party for her father in the Santo Domingo Yacht Club. The trial date, the judge and the court house, have yet to be announced.
The order to open the trial was issued to police corporal Janli Disla Batista and motorcyclist Rafael Castillo Novas (Argenis), 31 and 33 years old, respectively.
The court accepted the request of the prosecutor Altagracia Louis, of the Initial Litigation Department of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Santo Domingo East, with the legal qualification of voluntary manslaughter, criminal association and complicity to commit murder.
The incident occurred after the victim grazed a motorcycle in which the police corporal was traveling reportedly with two children and his pregnant wife.
The case file indicates that the incident occurred close to 7:30pm on Saturday, 2 October 2021, on Duarte Avenue in the direction from Andrés to Boca Chica.
The victim and her 15-year old daughter, whose name is omitted for legal reasons, were traveling in a Mercedes Benz SUV in a West-East direction, approximately 500 meters from the Parque Andres.
The legal instance indicates that the woman’s vehicle slightly grazed the Suzuki motorcycle driven by Disla Batista. The case indicates he was accompanied by his wife, Santana de Jesús Ramírez, and their two minor children, who fell to the pavement and were not injured, according to medical diagnoses.
It specifies that the accused Disla Batista fired several shots once the accident occurred. Rosado Marte, who was pregnant, chose not to stop the vehicle, trying to save her life and that of her daughter.
Subsequently, the police officer boarded another motorcycle driven by co-defendant Rafael Castillo Novas as a passenger and together they gave chase to the victim’s vehicle.
When they arrived near the Boca Chica beach area, Janli Disla fired several shots that hit the vehicle, one near the license plate and another one that was embedded in the right rear tire.
Then, with the regulation weapon in his hand, the agent repeatedly hit the driver’s side window, wounding the victim in the left hand, and fired two shots, one of which hit her in the head and caused her death.
It indicates that in the middle of the chase, the accused asked for help to members of the Dominican Navy who were moving around the place in a truck of that institution.
In his words in court, the accused police corporal Disla Batista apologized to the relatives of the deceased and reiterated that he never had the intention of killing the woman.
“When I realized that I had wounded a woman, I carried her and ran to the doctor,” he said.
The accused also disassociated the co-defendant Castillo Novas (a) Argenis, the motorcyclist, from the bloodshed.
The lawyer Luis Anibal Lopez, technical defense of Corporal Disla Batista, said that when his client hit Leslie Massiel Rosado Marte, he never had the intention of killing her, and that the shot escaped him accidentally.
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N Digital
Diario Libre
Noticias SIN
28 July 2022