Hitmen execute another member of La Mafilia in Montevideo following crime in Palermo
Leonardo Galli, 24, a member of the drug-trafficking clan La Mafilia, was killed in Villa Española, Montevideo, days after the murder of a leader of the same gang in Buenos Aires.
Double blow to the narco clan La Mafilia: one dead in Montevideo and another in Palermo
A white van screeched to a halt in the Villa Española neighbourhood, 20 minutes from central Montevideo, and three hitmen descended, firing in different directions. The attack, which occurred at 21:00 on Tuesday, claimed the life of Leonardo Galli, 24, a member of the family clan known as the Puglias and of the drug-trafficking gang La Mafilia, according to lanacion.com.ar.
Galli, who had a criminal record, died at Pasteur Hospital, where he had been taken by his own sister in a motor vehicle. The Montevideo Police Headquarters confirmed in a statement that "personnel from the Investigations Area of Operational Zone II took charge of proceedings and the presence of Scientific Police was arranged for the examination of the scene", while the Homicide Prosecutors' Office of the 4th Shift ordered the corresponding investigations.
The connection to the Palermo crime
The homicide did not escape the notice of Argentine detectives investigating the murder of Carlos Andrés Migales Viera, a 31-year-old Uruguayan drug trafficker shot in the early hours of Sunday in an apartment in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Palermo, where he was living with his partner and children. Sources in the case confirmed that Galli and Migales Viera were relatives, in addition to belonging to the same criminal organisation.
Migales Viera identified himself as a leader of La Mafilia and, although he did not carry the Puglia surname, was part of that family. "The victim killed in Palermo had control of the drug trade business in Villa Española. Drug distribution was his. He did not engage in street-level dealing," a detective participating in the investigation told lanacion.com.ar.
How the crime in Buenos Aires occurred
Migales Viera's murder took place on Sunday at 3:00 in the morning in an apartment on the second floor of a building located at Costa Rica 5600. Four hitmen made up the criminal group. "The killers entered the building with a copy of the magnetic key. They went directly to apartment 3 on the second floor, killed the victim and left without stealing anything. There is no doubt that this was a settling of scores. The hitmen used a silencer-fitted pistol," detectives in the case told the same media outlet after the crime.
On Monday, shortly after the attack, national judge in criminal and correctional matters Damián Kirszenbaum, in charge of the case, ordered the investigation sealed. The investigation involves prosecutor Anselmo Castelli and the Narco-Crime Prosecutors' Office (Procunar), headed by federal prosecutor Diego Iglesias.
The case has recorded three detentions to date. One of the suspects claims to be a car park attendant who was in the area when two young men, allegedly the hitmen, started running, and maintains that he "got caught up in the commotion". City Police seized a silencer-fitted pistol in the vicinity of the intersection of Santa Fe and Bullrich avenues, at the level of Puente Pacífico.
The only witness
The only witness to the crime in Palermo was María Mercedes Boneta Mandera, 27, Migales Viera's partner, who gave a statement to Argentine investigators. "She said that the killers, who were hooded, entered the apartment and, without saying a word, shot Migales Viera. She did not see the face of any of the killers, the first thing they did was go out on to the balcony to call for help," a source in the case told lanacion.com.ar.
The betrayal hypothesis
Detectives participating in the investigation suspect that Migales Viera was "handed over" from Uruguay: someone knew where he had gone into hiding in Argentina and "sold him out". The drug trafficker had arrived in the country the previous month, fleeing Uruguay because he knew that "his head had a price on it". He entered illegally, although his family did so through legal channels.
The main lead to advance the case is determining who had a copy of the electronic key to the building where the victim lived. Investigators do not believe that those detained would have had the technical capability to clone it.
A criminal history since the age of 14
Migales Viera, born on 18 December 1994, had accumulated a criminal record since his adolescence. At the age of 14 he was investigated for theft. In September 2012 he was charged with participation in a homicide, and had additional cases for escaping from a police station and for "robberies"—a Uruguayan term for robbery with violence or threats. He was subsequently charged with drug supply and in 2024 was investigated again for homicide.
Last August, they had already attempted to kill him in Villa Colón, another neighbourhood of Montevideo: criminals posing as police attacked him with gunfire in the early morning as he travelled in his vehicle with his partner. The gunshots wounded him and he lost control of the car, which crashed into a residential wall, according to the Uruguayan portal Telemundo on 1 August.
Gang war in Villa Española
According to Uruguayan media, La Mafilia maintains a violent dispute with another family clan, the Suárez, also from Villa Española. Last July, a shooting attack in that context left five dead, three of them members of the Suárez family.
Source: Google News UY — Montevideo