PINAR DEL RIO, January 3 (Víctor Rolando Arroyo, UPECI) –
Everyone seems to agree that the bullet that killed Leonardo Horta Camacho, 27,
on December 28, came out of a policeman’s gun. Beyond that, every detail of
his death is clouded rumors, in the absence of even an official report.
Some say he was discovered as he attempted to steal a pig, took flight, and
was shot in the neck by police. Others say that several neighbors and police
chased him before he was shot. There is also a version that claims Horta could
have been mistaken for one of two prison escapees, considered dangerous, for
whom police have been looking for several days.
Neither his foster mother nor his live-in lover have received an official
explanation of his death. The latter, Dianelis Soto Labastida, said that a
policeman explained to her that Horta had struggled with a policeman and had
been accidentally shot as a result of the scuffle, some time between 8 and 9 in
the morning of the 28th.
Soto says that Horta left home at 5:15 a.m. in his bicycle and that he
forgot his ID card at home. When Horta didn’t come home in the afternoon,
Soto went looking for him at the place where he worked as a messenger and found
he hadn’t shown up that day. At that time, rumors were already circulating
of the death of an unidentified man, and she went to the police station with
Horta’s ID card. Later, in the hospital, she identified his body.
Soto said that she saw small hematomas in the body’s forehead, nose,
and left shoulder, and that she noticed that the bullet’s entry wound had
been sutured. She also said that she was not given the clothes Horta wore, nor
his belongings, and that no one seems to know where his bicycle is.
It appears that Horta may have been killed at Kilometer 14 on the road to
the town of Luis Lazo; it would have taken him at least 30 minutes to get there
from the time he left home, by which time it would have been light out.
"You would have to be crazy to try to steal a pig at that time,"
said Soto. Horta lived in Pinar del Río with Soto, but he was originally
from the small town of Pons, 40 kilometers north of the city.
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