The turn of the year bounced in with a bang, often all too literally, in Metropolitan Caracas as unofficial estimates suggested that 31 people met violent deaths in a period of not much more than 12 hours, if that.
In the continuing and by now customary absence of official figures, the estimate is based on a mixture of the number of dead bodies arriving at the city morgue and information from police sources. The task this time round was made all the more difficult by a shortage of vehicles and other equipment to take dead bodies to the morgue. This meant that in come cases the corpses of the slain lay on streets for some hours until the police arrived.
The festive season is renowned for sudden upward surges in the murder rate, fuelled by drugs, drink, personal animosities and the like as well as ceaseless common crime. But even if people act with what they think is good sense, that doesn't mean they're any safer if they're out and about when so, too, are bandits.
A family chose to toast in the New Year in Catia, a notoriously violent district of west Caracas. They decided to reduce the risk by waiting until the sun came up before going home. Their destination was Caricuao, a district with a reputation that's not much better, and the route there involved taking the Avenida Francisco Fajardo, one of the major arterial highways in the city.
They decided to travel in two cars, sticking close to each other. Jean Gamboa, 31, accompanied by his mother, Alicia, 60, went ahead in the first car, followed by Eduardo Gamboa, his wife and their eight-year-old daughter behind. But once on the highway, Eduardo Gamboa noticed they were being followed by another car. This drew alongside and somebody in the front passenger seat opened fire. Gamboa slammed on the brakes, hung an abrupt about-turn and got away. But his brother stopped and got out, apparently intent on an argument. The man with a gun shot him. Gamboa jumped back in his car and tried to get away, but he was seriously wounded and crashed the car into a bridge. The car was a complete write-off, and so were he and his mother.
In the meantime, names are emerging in the case of four cops accused of slaying Jean Carlos Obispo García, 23, one of their own, on December 28. A court has ordered Wilmer Jaime Tovar Jaimes, an officer at the Caricuao unit of the scientific and investigative police, Cicpc, to be held in custody on murder charges. The three other officers in the frame have been released on bail, apparently on lesser charges that it wasn't them who actually pulled the fatal trigger. They include two women officers. There are serious discrepancies in the versions of events told by relatives of the victim and the police concerning the circumstances in which Obispo García died.
The cops claim there was a shoot-out. The relatives say the suspects arrived in a vehicle but it was only Tovar Jaimes who got out and that he shot Obispo García at close range and without saying a word. Tovar Jaimes is said to have tried to rush away from the scene of the crime at gun-point in a taxi. But he ran across a squad of other cops who took him in. At the moment of his arrest, he's said to have had not only his regulation issue Glock weapon on him, but also another pistol from which the registration numbers had been erased.
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