Eight-year-old boy with autism dies from police bullet in Huacho: mother denounces police abandonment
The mother of the eight-year-old boy killed during an operation in Huacho states that no police authority has contacted her. She demands justice and alleges that the family paid 350 soles for his transport.
Mother of boy killed in Huacho police operation: "Nobody has contacted me"
Verónica Portal publicly denounced that no authority from the Peruvian National Police (PNP) has made contact with her since the death of her eight-year-old son, who died after being hit by a bullet during a police operation in Huacho. "All I ask for is justice," the woman stated during her son's wake.
According to infobae.com, Portal recounted the events on Willax Noticias. On the night of the incident, she was returning with her son—who had autism—from the Virgin of Carmen Fair in Huaura. They took a motorcycle taxi driven by an acquaintance to return to Huacho. "We were coming from the Virgin of Carmen Fair in Huaura. We were there until 11:30 p.m. We called a motorcycle taxi, an acquaintance, to take us as a taxi," she said.
As they approached a joint operation by the Police and Serenazgo in the area, the motorcycle taxi driver became alarmed at not having documents or money with him. "My friend, the acquaintance who was driving the motorcycle, sees that and says: 'I haven't brought my documents right now, I don't have money'," Portal stated.
The driver made a sharp U-turn and the vehicle ended up overturning. "He turned in a 'U' desperately and that's when we flipped over with the motorcycle and then I grabbed my son, I hugged him tightly," the mother described.
Portal asserted that, following the accident, police officers approached and began beating the driver and the vehicle's occupants. "The police come and directly come to hit the driver, us with their gun in hand, trying to assault us," she said.
Regarding the moment of the shooting, the mother specified the distance at which the officer was standing. "He (the police officer) was half a metre away from me with the gun in his hand, pointing up and down. We were telling him: 'No, no!' because he had the weapon in his hand," she recounted.
Portal also rejected the institutional version regarding the assistance provided after the incident. She affirmed that the family paid out of pocket for the wounded boy's transport: "We paid as a family 350 soles for the ambulance to transport my young son." She added that the boy was taken to the hospital only because she demanded it in the absence of police transport. "We transported my son at the moment the bullet hit him, it was because I begged them, because there was no other vehicle, no transport for me to take him to the hospital," she stated.
The woman denied having received any communication from Interior Minister José Zapata or any other official. "Nobody has contacted me," she maintained, and described the officers' actions as an abuse of authority: "Because they are police officers doesn't mean they can do whatever they please and try to kill, intimidate people for having a position."
Source: Google News PE — Crime