Paraguayan citizen shot dead in Quilmes in apparent narco revenge killing
Julio César Arriola Sosa, 38, was shot five times in San Francisco Solano. The crime is part of a series of murders of foreign contract killers in the AMBA.
Contract killer executes Paraguayan witness in Quilmes in possible narco reprisal
Julio César Arriola Sosa, a 38-year-old Paraguayan citizen, was shot dead five times at the corner of streets 861 and 898 in San Francisco Solano, in the municipality of Quilmes, shortly after 22:30 on 16 October. According to lanacion.com.ar, the crime bears the hallmarks of a settling of scores linked to drug trafficking gangs operating in the Triple Border region.
The attacker arrived on foot at the house where Arriola Sosa was staying with a relative. He waited for the victim to get out of his Volkswagen Suran and shot him five times. After the attack, he walked a block and a half and boarded a motorbike where an accomplice was waiting for him. There were no eyewitnesses, but two security cameras recorded the entire sequence.
He had arrived from Paraguay months earlier
Arriola Sosa entered Argentina on 28 July from Cambyretá, a town near Encarnación in the Paraguayan department of Itapúa. During his stay he worked as a bricklayer and first lived with a relative in El Pato, in Berazategui municipality, before moving in with his sister in the Quilmes area.
On the day he was murdered, he had suffered a robbery that morning at the construction site where he worked in Moreno. The criminals stole his mobile phone. Arriola Sosa was not alone at the time, but he was the only worker attacked. That night, at the opposite end of Greater Buenos Aires, he was killed.
The camera footage made it possible to determine that the contract killer knew precisely the time at which the victim returned home. He fired at the exact moment his target got out of the vehicle.
Theory: key witness in a narco murder
Investigators from the Quilmes Departmental Investigations Directorate are studying the possibility that Arriola Sosa had travelled to Argentina after testifying as a witness in the case of the murder of Ramón Rolando Miño Rolón, a drug trafficker shot dead three times in his house in the Tacuarí neighbourhood in Cambyretá.
Miño Rolón was wanted in Paraguay for at least two murders, and investigators suspect that other crimes could be added to his record. His body bore wounds from 9mm and 5.56mm projectiles—the latter calibre corresponds to assault rifles such as the M4. A protected witness told the courts that he was executed by men wearing camouflage clothing and balaclavas. Before returning to Paraguay and being murdered, Miño Rolón had remained in hiding in Argentina.
That crime occurred four days before Arriola Sosa's arrival in the country. Paraguayan press reports indicated that Miño Rolón had planned an imminent trip to Argentina to evade his pursuers. The connection between the two events has neither been confirmed nor ruled out. The head of the Quilmes police station requested information from Paraguayan authorities through Interpol.
Second foreign murder in two weeks in the AMBA
The case of Arriola Sosa adds to that of Carlos Andrés Migales Viera, a 27-year-old Uruguayan drug trafficker, murdered on 4 October in the flat he rented in Costa Rica at number 5600 in Palermo. Three attackers broke into the flat and shot him eight times with a silenced pistol. The motive, according to police sources, was revenge in the context of a war between Uruguayan gangs. Migales Viera had travelled to Buenos Aires seeking refuge, but someone informed on his whereabouts: "he was sold out", according to the same source.
Two weeks earlier, Heriberto Azamendía, a small-time Paraguayan drug dealer, was shot dead 13 times at the door of his house in González Catán, in La Matanza municipality. The contract killer called him by name as he was heading towards the shop. When Azamendía turned around, he received 13 shots to the face. The attacker then changed the magazine, fired at the bunker from which the victim had sold drugs, and fled. In total there were 26 shots fired.
As the impacts had completely disfigured Azamendía's face, investigators had to resort to fingerprint comparison to identify him. In the bunker located two houses away from his home on the same block where he was executed, police found drugs, a laptop, scales, two mobile phones, a sub-machine gun with two magazines, a 9mm pistol, ammunition and three transmitters.
Series of crimes bearing the signature of international gangs
For investigators, the murders of Arriola Sosa, Migales Viera and Azamendía are not isolated incidents. All three cases share the pattern of specialised contract killers, victims of foreign nationality and motives linked to conflicts between narco organisations operating beyond Argentine borders. In all cases, the attackers acted with prior knowledge of the movements and routines of their targets.
The request for information sent to Paraguay through Interpol seeks to clarify whether Arriola Sosa actually testified as a witness in the case of Miño Rolón and whether that testimony could have motivated his execution. None of these particulars has yet been confirmed by his relatives or formally incorporated into the judicial file.
Source: Google News AR — Buenos Aires