Unprecedented wave of narco-violence stuns Argentina city

Unprecedented wave of narco-violence stuns Argentina city

BY ISABEL DEBRE AND ALMUDENA CALATRAVA
Updated 1:24 AM CDT, April 21, 2024

ROSARIO, Argentina (AP) — The order to kill came from inside a federal prison near Argentina’s capital. Unwitting authorities patched a call from drug traffickers tied to one of the country’s most notorious gangs to collaborators on the outside. Hiring a 15-year-old hit man, they sealed the fate of a young father they didn’t even know.

At a service station on March 9 in Rosario, the picturesque hometown of soccer star Lionel Messi, 25-year-old employee Bruno Bussanich was whistling to himself and checking the day’s earnings just before he was shot three times from less than a foot away, surveillance footage shows. The assailant fled without taking a peso.

It was the fourth gang-related fatal shooting in Rosario in almost as many days. Authorities called it an unprecedented rampage in Argentina, which had never witnessed the extremes of drug cartel violence afflicting some other Latin American countries.

A handwritten letter was found near Bussanich’s body, addressed to officials who want to curb the power drug kingpins wield from behind bars. “We don’t want to negotiate anything. We want our rights,” it says. “We will kill more innocent people.”

Shaken residents interviewed by The Associated Press across Rosario described a sense of dread taking hold.

More:
https://apnews.com/article/narcotics-gangs-prisons-argentina-rosario-33c910bbfbf1f97e68c18fa1ce0033cf