Bogotá (EFE).- The death of Colombian Police Lieutenant Colonel Óscar Dávila, assigned to presidential security and related to the scandal of illegal wiretapping in the Government, was a suicide, the Attorney General’s Office reported on Wednesday.
“The conclusion for the Attorney General’s Office is that Lieutenant Colonel Óscar Dávila, 42 years old and with 24 years of service, decides to take his own life and with the weapon that belonged to his driver. For the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation, the results of the autopsy are positive for suicide,” concluded the Deputy Attorney General, Martha Janeth Mancera, at a press conference.
The conclusion from the forensic point of view was also that “without any doubt, this is a typical case of a contact injury with all the characteristics of a suicide,” said the forensic doctor Jorge Eduardo Paredes, from the Prosecutor’s Office.
Dávila, who was part of the security circle of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, was found dead on June 9 in his vehicle on a street in Bogotá with a shot to the temple, for which reason the authorities from the beginning They were treated as a suicide, although a stir was created in the country due to the possibility that the cause of death was another.
But “from the forensic point of view, it is a very clear case” of suicide, according to Paredes, who added that when reviewing the body and the clothes he was wearing, they found “a pattern of blood spatters that reflects a U-shaped model, which gives us a very strong indication that this person had a weapon drawn (…) something that can also be seen on the sleeve”.
In addition, the autopsy concluded that “the body did not have any sign of a fight, fight, restraint or defenselessness,” explained Paredes.
The case of Colonel Dávila
Dávila’s name appeared in the scandal for alleged abuse of power and illegal telephone interceptions of a babysitter accused of burglary at the home of former presidential chief of staff Laura Sarabia, which, according to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, put great pressure on him. , which led him to take his own life.
It all started with the complaint by the former babysitter Marelbys Meza that after being accused of stealing a briefcase with an unspecified amount of money, they made her go to a presidential office where she was interrogated and subjected to polygraph tests without a court order.
At the same time, the Police illegally intercepted his phone, using an operation against the Clan del Golfo criminal gang as a front.
Lieutenant Colonel Dávila was among the officers linked to the Prosecutor’s investigation.
The scandal triggered one of the worst crises in the Petro government, and forced the resignation of Sarabia and the Venezuelan ambassador, Armando Benedetti, who was the one who allegedly leaked what happened to the press.
Petro, for his part, regretted yesterday having “underestimated” the pressure to which the colonel was subjected.
“It’s as if they lent me a human being that I couldn’t take care of myself because I underestimated the pressure, me, because I’m used to feeling it, and I think other people do, and it’s not like that, no human being is the same,” said the president.