“Three
sons killed,
two of them
murdered by
the police”
Lilliana Zerpa is convinced that her 17-year-old son, Gregody Andrian Mijares Zerpa, did not die when he shoot against Cicpc officials, but they murdered him inside his home. She assures that one of the responsible policemen confessed to her:“Excuse us, ma'am. It got out of hand. We were wrong”. The mother formalized the complaint before the Public Ministry and after six months there is still no investigation, there is no trial, there is no sanction. Duels have been superimposed over four years. In August 2014 the oldest of her sons, aged 20, was killed in another alleged confrontation with the PNB; just four months later she lost another 17-year-old teenager, allegedly at the hands of criminals with whom he had quarrels
Erick S. González Caldea
hen she was called with the news that dozens of officers from the Scientific and Criminal Investigation Corps (Cicpc) were at her house, that her son was inside, that shots had been heard, the first thing she did was implore:“Not again Lord, not again!”.
She does not remember the journey, nor how she arrived. She puts the accent on that half hour, which was eternal, after 11:00 am on Thursday, January 11, 2018, while she was standing in front of a police contingent that prevented her from entering her residence.
Her home, from which she had left at 6:30 a.m. to fulfill the daily routine of working as a domestic in La Trinidad, had become a space taken by force by strangers. She saw him from afar as she pressed her lips tightly, as if not to let her fears escape.
What was happening? Why did they keep her son in her own house? Why could not she enter? Why could not I see him or talk to him? Why were they looking for him? Nothing. I did not know anything. Nobody informed her anything.
She tried to wrestle with the policemen, but it was enough for a couple of them to extend their arms to form an insurmountable chain. Cicpc officials limited themselves to telling her
“Lady, you can not pass, we are doing an operation. We are looking for some people who are at your home”.
Extremely distressed, Liliana Zerpa was shouting at them: “What people?, there is only Gregody, my son; he was there alone, sleeping”. But the police only paid attention to her for moments and they continued talking among themselves, communicating by radio, writing in notebooks, entering and leaving the house.
She looked around and it seemed that all the inhabitants of Sisipa were there. They crowded to try to find out what was happening. At first she felt accompanied, even supported, but after a while she realized that, although there were many people, no one but her was willing to fight for the life of her son, her sister and her niece. At 11:30 am the police movement intensified and the unknowns were cleared in the worst way that Liliana Zerpa can remember.
Suddenly, all the hustle and bustle stopped. A few minutes passed until two officials left their house carrying a stretcher in which a body covered with a sheet was observed. Liliana recognized it immediately, it was the one who wore Gregody's bed.
She vanished, fell to her knees. She covered her face with her hands and cried nonstop.
While the body of his 17-year-old son Gregody Andrian Mijares Zerpa was being moved to the back of a vehicle that she was not allowed to approach, she repeated:“Not again Lord, not again!”
W
II
Sisipa is located in the Bucarito sector of the Baruta parish, in the municipality of El Hatillo, Miranda state. Arriving in the neighborhood implies traveling kilometers of road, which zigzag within the hills.
When you arrive, after an hour of green roads, you see hundreds of houses agglomerated in the interior of the mountain.
“I cried like crazy, no one told me anything and I saw a policeman who was also crying, but he was far. Then I asked another officer besides me, why did you kill my son? and he said: ‘Excuse us, ma'am. It got out of hand. We were wrong’”
Liliana Zerpa
Liliana Zerpa has lived there since she was born, 41 years ago. At the beginning, she was in her parents' house. When she started a life together with the father of her first son, Gregonis Adrián Sánchez Zerpa, she bought where she currently lives.
With another man she had three more sons: Gregonis Andiri, Gregody Andrian, and the youngest and only female, Grendis. She explains that they have similar names because she wanted everyone to be associated with "Gregorio", but she does not give further explanations. Nor does she speak of the parents of her children, neither of the first nor the second. She defines herself as “one of the many women in this country who raised their children alone”.
The police took Liliana's three children. Her only companies are her daughter Grendis and her one-year-old granddaughter.
Grendis is 20 years old and has a daughter. She works at La Trinidad as an employee for a pharmacy store chain.
“My brother was murdered, this crime can not be forgotten”, she emphasized.
III
It was not the first time that Liliana went to the morgue to recognize the body of a son. The eldest, Gregonis Adrián, was 20 years old when officials of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) arrived in the neighborhood in search of alleged criminals operating in the area. Liliana was informed that her son faced the PNB and died of several shots. He was a motorcycle mechanic. The homicide occurred on August 30, 2014.
Three and a half months later, on December 16, the second loss came. Gregonis Andiri was also killed. Leaving his home, the 17-year-old was intercepted and shot by other young people with whom he had quarrels. That is the version that Liliana has, which would have provided witnesses, because there was no police investigation of the fact.
Going back to the morgue to pick up her second murdered son would not be the end of Liliana's calamities. On January 11, 2018, she would have to return to the forensic medicine centre of Bello Monte, because there was the body of the third man she had given birth.
“That day, the day that my son Gregody was killed, I was desperate. I asked everyone what happened, how was it that my son, who was in the house sleeping, came out of there dead. I cried like crazy, nobody said anything to me and I saw a policeman who also cried, but he was far away. So I asked another policeman who I had me next to me. Why did they kill my son? And he said: 'Excuse us, ma'am, it got out of hand. We were wrong ".
In spite of the tremendous confession, that Liliana would never forget the face of that policeman who admitted the fatal error that caused Gregody Andrian's death, and that she could easily identify him, this third time (“Not again Lord, not again”) nor was there an efficient investigation to identify those responsible.
After the murder of her three children, Liliana Zerpa clings to her faith / Photo Mikel Ferreira
Liliana specifies that the boy had days off, especially if he doubled his shifts in a construction company. And that, therefore, is why that January 11 he was in the house at 10:00 am, when the police broke. "My niece had brought him breakfast at ten in the morning. She told me that about ten minutes after she left him some food, the police arrived in the neighborhood, unfolded, found my house and the events happened”, claims.
“My boy was very affectionate and made a joke out of everything. Sometimes he would sit on the big sofa and put his head on my legs so I cuddle him”, she remembers with tenderness.
“Mom, why are you going to denounce, if you know it was the policemen who killed him, they are bad. I do not want you to be hurt”
Grendis Mijares
She remembers the first time she could enter her house after what happened. It was at 4:00 pm, more than five hours after the murder. “They washed the scene of the crime. Right here I found a water puddle”, says while showing the kitchen. “What did they want to hide? They are so brazen that after they kill my son they apologize and say they were wrong. How wrong you could be to kill a person?”, repeats and highlights as an essential argument in all the opportunities that she talked with Proiuris over three months.
She spent a month living with a friend in La Trinidad. She ensures that she could not sleep in her house disturbed by the crime scene. She does not want to know in what specific place the boy was murdered. She covered with plaster, with cement, with mirrors, with ornaments, with calendars ... the orifices of the bullets that remained in the walls. She says that she rarely enters the room where the young man slept. There lies a stretched bed.
Liliana gets up from the furniture and walks through the house where she has lived for almost 20 years and now she seems not to recognize. She stops and looks at the wall behind the front door. There is an altar with photographs of her three dead sons, plastic flowers, an image of José Gregorio Hernández and half a dozen multicolored rosaries.
“The altar was in front of the door but I could not have it there. Every time I entered I saw the faces of my children. I could not with so much pain. I changed it. Once I put it at the end of the hall, but I had the feeling that they were watching me. That's why it is now behind the door”, says the woman.
Liliana defines herself by the tragedy she has had to live as a mother: “Three sons killed, two of them killed by the police”
IV
According to the official report of the case prepared and disseminated by the Cicpc on January 11, 2018, “Gregody Andrian Mijares Zerpa, a.k.a ‘the baby’, died after facing commissions from the Anti-Theft Division”.
“If Cicpc officers were the ones who killed my son, how can I trust the investigations that were left in charge of their co-workers, of other Cicpc officials? Most likely, they have not done anything”.
Liliana Zerpa
The police report says: “After many inquiries made by officials, in search of full identification and location of the members of the band 'The silverish of the Bucaritos', responsible for residence thefts occurred in the area of El Hatillo, managed to locate them in the aforementioned place. The detectives went to the place to apprehend the members of this criminal group, who when noticing the police presence fired shots at the troops, causing an exchange of shots, where one of the criminals was wounded and was transferred to the Domingo Luciani Hospital, place where he died, while the rest manages to flee the site. A Walther PPK pistol, caliber 7.65 mm, two bullets and four shells were seized at the scene. Likewise, when the inert today was verified, it was found that it presents police records for the crime of theft. The Fourth Prosecutor's Office of the Public Ministry of the Metropolitan Area of Caracas has the knowledge of the case”.
Liliana denies this version outright. “My son was not a thief. I know that my older children were not saints, one of them was in bad roads. But Gregody was not a criminal”, she claims. She insists that the boy was alone in the house.
Gregory Mijares Zerpa was 17 years old when he was killed / Photo Mikel Ferreira
V
“Mom, why are you going to denounce, if you know it was the policemen who killed him, they are bad. I do not want you to be hurt” says her daughter Grendis Mijares, at the beginning of April.
The day after Gregory Andrian's death, Liliana formalized the complaint with Cicpc. That day they assured her that they would call her from the Public Prosecutor's Office in three months, but that did not happen.
Liliana tells that she did not denounce the death of her first child because of fear seized her, but this time she will not let herself be defeated. “I want to at least try. I want a little justice. Justice must be done for his death. My son deserves it”, insists. She feels cheated by the Cicpc detectives with whom she has spoken about the case and who justify the murder by pointing out that Gregody Andrian was requested for robbery in a residence in El Hatillo.
-I'm going to report you! What do I have to do? Where do I have to go?, said Liliana to the officer who interviewed her on January 12, 2018.
- Madam, do whatever is in your hands, the Prosecutor's Office will call you in the next three months, the Cicpc officer assured him that he delivered the necessary report to remove Gregody's body from the Bello Monte morgue.
Three months passed and there was no call from the Prosecutor's Office. Half a year has passed and nothing. Liliana reasons with elementary common sense: “If it was Cicpc officers who killed my son, how can I trust the investigations that were left in charge of his coworkers, of other Cicpc officials? Most likely they have not done anything.”
Liliana did not wait any longer and on April 30 went to the Public Prosecutor's Office. Up to the present, it has only achieved the appointment of the 80th Public Prosecutor of Fundamental Rights, Elvis Rodríguez, as head of the investigations.
The deception of the case in a police office operates as a mechanism of impunity. Although the Public Prosecutor's Office is obliged to guarantee the speed of criminal investigations, in this, as in many other cases in which victims are stigmatized a priori as criminals, the Prosecutor's Office crosses its arms and only waits for the results of the inquiries. “We have not had a specific answer. The prosecutor told me to wait for the Cicpc's report. But, they have not given a single paper”, says Liliana.
"That was a death sentence, without a prosecutor or a judge," she repeats, and the idea of the head will not be removed from her head. On the contrary, it protects it as a basis to strengthen its demand for justice. At the beginning of her encounters with Proiuris, her tone of voice was low; several weeks later it shows that, although torn, it is not completely defeated.
Since four years ago when she began to lose her children, she has also lost some kilos. "Like seven" she says and downplays her weight loss. She prefers to reaffirm her will to fight against impunity. The confession that a police officer made her, fills her courage: "Excuse us, ma'am. It got out of hand. We're wrong".
