What is it worth to me? Let him do what he did. At least his family can visit him in prison every eight days, but we have to go to the cemetery every eight days and pray to God that my brother rests in peace.”
That’s what María Cortés told this editorial group in July, one year after the tragic death of her brother, the math teacher Erick Jhoan Cortés Muñoz.
The teacher, 42 years old at the time, suffered a severe head injury when he fell on a concrete bollard, after being pushed by his friend Eduardo Alfonso Quintero Martínez in the middle of an argument in the early hours of July 8, 2022.
The event happened in the Historic Center of Cartagena, after the two left a nightclub in the area with other friends.
conviction
Fourteen months ago, a judge with functions of Knowledge supported the arguments of the Prosecutor’s Office and issued a conviction against Quintero, a doctor-surgeon by profession.
“The Prosecutor’s Office showed that the aggressor and victim faced each other in a fight and that the convicted person did not mention the events that caused the person to lose consciousness and prevented him from being treated properly in time and sufficient means,” said the prosecuting body.
With the evidence, the investigating agency showed that on July 8, 2022, the convicted person, while drunk, fought with Cortés Muñoz.
“During the argument, the convicted person hit the face of another person, who fell to the floor and suffered a brain injury that left him unconscious,” said the Prosecutor’s Office.
Revealed in videos
For the relatives of Cortés Muñoz, there is no doubt that they did not give him first aid in the early morning of July 8 because his friend did not tell the truth.
After the beating, the aggressor took the victim to a health center and there reported that Erick lost consciousness due to the level of alcohol; and did not explain the confrontation and the blow the man suffered in the head.
The prosecution also showed that the person responsible for the injuries, without permission from the doctors, took the professor to the latter’s house.
There he informed the parents that their son, Erick Cortés, was very sleepy due to his state of intoxication; and again he avoided mentioning their discussion.
Because the man did not wake up, his relatives took him to a clinic, where he died nine days later, due to trauma to his brain.
In the course of the judicial proceedings, the Prosecutor’s Office showed that the convicted person, by hiding the true circumstances that caused the victim to lose consciousness, was added to the actions to avoid individual medical attention , is responsible for the crime of aggravated murder.
Quintero Martínez has been deprived of his liberty since December 2022, after being arrested in Torices, and in the coming days the trial judge will announce the sentence he will have to serve.
“Justice has been done”: María Cortés
María Cortés, Erick’s sister, spoke about this decision. “Everyone asked to give him the maximum punishment, because he did not tell the health staff of the San José de Torices clinic, my parents, and then he continued everything, when my father, in his level of innocence, went. to find him. at his house at night and brought him to the Ermita clinic so he could tell the doctors what happened.
“He also did not tell the neurosurgeon on duty what happened to my brother and others, that he hit my brother and he also fell on the floor, and hit himself and from there the trauma arose. severe craniocerebral injury, cranial fracture of the left temporal bone, subdural hematoma, underlying fracture focus, multiple contralateral hemorrhagic cerebral contusions and cerebral edema.
“He (Eduardo Quintero) allowed my brother’s life opportunities to end by not allowing my brother to receive medical care. Eduardo will pay for what he did.”
