A taxi driver was sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing the pension of a 91-year-old passenger

The 6th appointment Criminal and Correctional Chamber of the city of Cordoba sentenced to eight years in prison a taxi driver accused of stealing the pension of a 91-year-old passenger, whom he hit with a wooden stick and dragged with the car during the robbery. He was also tried for snatching a purse from a 67-year-old woman as she walked down the street, in an abbreviated trial where the author admitted the two acts committed respectively in 2021 and 2018.

Judgment was rendered by the Unipersonal Chamber 1 by Judge Enrique Butelerwho at the time of conviction Maximilian Andrés Peralta34, valued “the quality of the elderly of the two victims and the particular way in which they took advantage” to commit “two acts of violence against property” in the middle of the public highway.

To rule, the judge recounted the accumulated evidence, and highlighted the theft against the retired Adolfo Mario Romeroswho at 91 had gone to seek his retirement at the bank supervisor in the center of town and, at the request of his daughter – a civil party in the case – he took a taxi home. It was 10 a.m. on March 25, 2021, and he had just received 59,000 pesos.

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Romero rode on a Taxi brand Fiat Siena and told the driver how to get to his place, in the Maldonado neighborhood. Peralta, who worked in the company “Raptaxi“To earn extra money, he drove to a point where, according to the judge, he ‘stopped the drive and told the pensioner he could not continue because the road was unpaved’.

The old man prepared to descend and “take advantage of the situation” the taxi driver snatched the bag with his retirement. “He immediately accelerated (…) to leave him in place”, which knocked Romero out of the car but remained hanging in the back seat. Since he didn’t want to let go, he was dragged a few meters until “Peralta took a big wooden stick, about a meter long, which he pulled out of the side of his seat and hit him several times on the hands. In this way, he managed to make him let go and fall to the ground to flee, ”reviewed Judge Buteler.

According to the medical report presented in the case, the retiree entered by security guard 2 hours after the robbery accompanied by police personnel and “with a 50 mm longitudinal wound on the left leg”. The next day he would be admitted to the coronary unit for cardiopulmonary arrest – he already had a pacemaker – and 2 months later he would die.

For his part, the judge pointed out that the Fiat Siena was found by means of satellite geolocation tracking thanks to the information provided by the company in charge of the taxi service and which, for its part, the mother of the author of the act appeared the same evening of the event at the home of the pensioner’s daughter to return the money taken of your retirement.

At the moment of solving to repair the effective 8-year prison sentence, the judge “in particular took into account the international agreements concluded by the Argentine State concerning the right to old age. In particular, the recent normative hierarchy of Inter-American Convention on the Protection of the Human Rights of Older Persons of the year 2015, of which, according to the rule of law, 27,770 now have constitutional status”.

“On this occasion -he developed in his sentence- The Argentine State has made a commitment to adopt measures for better protection and satisfaction of the fundamental rights of the elderly. And this is linked, not only to a legislative adaptation, but also to an interpretation of the laws in force which tends to this more effective protection.

And then he added: “At the level of current law, what mainly interests us here, Such a hierarchy of the convention translates into a need to interpret penal norms constitutionally according to their purposes. In cases like this, this translates into an increase in the preventive need for sanctions which must be projected in the process of judicial individualization of the sanction to be imposed”.

The setting of the prison sentence took place after the summary trial agreement carried by the defense of Peralta and the Attorney of the Chamber Fernando Palma. In said case, the fact of the theft in 2018 against Liliana Soledad Salva67 year old woman returning from shopping with her friend Naomi Yolanda Cuello84 years old, when he suffered the explosion of his stock market.

In this context, the Judge Buteler resolved: “To declare Maximiliano Andrés Peralta (…) perpetrator of the crimes of larceny -first fact- and perpetrator of the crime of robbery doubly qualified for the injurious result and the use of an improper weapon in an ideal competition (…) -second fact-, all this in a real competition”.

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