Gabriela Cabrera ("Gabi")
Age 2313 Nov 2021
San Lorenzo, Central (Paraguay)
Not reported
Gabi's body was found alongside a stream on Thursday 11th November. Eight months earlier she had been kidnapped, tortured and then thrown into the same stream by a group of men.
The 23-year-old transgender girl, Gabriela Cabrera, was found dead on Thursday, November 11, on the banks of the San Lorenzo stream, located on calles Saturio Ríos and Fortín Arce in the city of San Lorenzo. Gabi , as her relatives affectionately called her, was a volunteer at Casa Diversa, the first home in Paraguay for LGBT victims of violence. In March of this year six men had kidnapped her, beat her and tortured her inside a vehicle , and then threw her into the San Lorenzo stream.
Eight months later, the police found her dead in the same place. Her neighbors saw Gabi on the ground with a man crying over her motionless body. At 10:00 in the morning, they notified both the human rights activist, Yren Rotela and the family, and they went together to identify the body of the young transgender woman. According to Rotela, the person who was sleeping next to Gabi's lifeless body is Reinaldo Manuel Fernández Gonzalez, her 25-year-old partner.
The prosecution ordered Reinaldo's arrest and an investigatory statement was taken from him, but he was detained for less than six hours. In communication with Presentes , the prosecutor Gerardo Mosqueira said that they did not detain him because they did not gather enough evidence to do so. "We cannot accuse just to impute, we have to have elements to support an accusation," he said.
However, Reinaldo stated that before finding her dead, they had had an argument. That he left her for ten minutes and that, when he returned, he found her lifeless, with a rope wrapped around her neck very close to a tree. “He told us that Gabi hung herself from the tree. That they were together, then he left the place and that when he returned he already found Gabi hanging by the tree. Then, from the fright, he jumped over it and there the rope was released and they fell to the ground together and fell asleep. That was the scene that we found, ”says Mosqueira.
The prosecutor indicated that the forensic doctor determined in a preliminary way that it could be a case of suicide, but to determine the real cause of death, the body was subjected to an autopsy. "Last Friday the autopsy was carried out and the result will be in two or three weeks, where it will be possible to determine whether it was a suicide or not," adds Mosqueira. Her family and loved ones demanded that the case be thoroughly investigated.
For Yren it is not clear that it is a suicide. He is struck by the fact that everything happened in a period of 10 minutes, that the rope broke when they fell to the ground together and that Gabi's body did not show any signs of blows. Yren saw her for the last time on Tuesday afternoon the 9th. On that occasion, she asked her how she was and Gabi told her that he had injuries, that some men beat her at the weekend. “They humiliated me a lot,” she told Yren, who noticed that Gabi was limping on one leg. She also told her that her head hurt, a fact that Mónica, a health promoter for the Panambí Association, confirmed.
Three days before she died Gabi had been beaten by a group of men ouside a bowling alley.
On Saturday 13, Yren published on her social networks two videos recorded at dawn on Saturday, November 6, [three] days before Gabi's lifeless appearance, in which she is clearly seen being attacked by a group of men at the exit of a bowling alley in San Lorenzo. "On Friday those images come to me," says Yren, "when I make Gabi's death public, the people who recorded the video write to me on my social networks."
Gabi practiced sex work on the corner of one of the nightclubs and frequented that location. One of the people who contacted Yren with the images of that night says that, for fun, they throw a loaded champagne bottle at him and then a glass of chopp directly at her head. "That is the one I see later when we meet days later. Then, she reacts because she felt hurt and starts throwing bottles in the middle of the road. At that moment, one of the bottles crosses and it is said that it was through a windshield ”, he says.
One of the people who shared the video with Yren told her that they desperately called 911 but [the emergency services] never came. She was lying on the ground for more than an hour. In the video, only a woman in a black shirt is seen pushing away the people who beat her and gettingg Gabi out of the way. “She was beaten by more than 10 people for 20 minutes. Those who were inside one of the clubs filmed and gave me the video. And there were security guards who saw everything and did not defend Gabi, ”says the activist.
Gabi liked to dance and act. She was closely involved with Casa Diversa and was part of the artistic cast of Transformando Realidades.
In March she had also been attacked:
Around 11:00 this Monday, a 22-year-old trans woman was found on the banks of the San Lorenzo stream, in the city of the same name. The information was confirmed by activist Yren Rotela, who told TODAY that this person was tied hand and foot and gagged at the time of her rescue. After being transferred to a healthcare center for a medical inspection, it was found that this person had traces of trauma in various parts of the body such as the rib and stomach.
According to the victim's account, she was attacked between 5 and 6 in the morning by a group of unknown men, who beat her when she was on her back and left her unconscious, later placing a bag on her head before taking her into a private vehicle. After several hours disappeared, her attackers left her on the banks of the stream, a place from where she would have crawled until she reached a nearby house, being helped by the owner of the house who was in charge of calling the police, Rotela mentioned.
The trans woman attacked was a sex worker who was making her usual journey to the center of San Lorenzo, as detailed. In addition to having been beaten, it is not ruled out that the victim has also been the subject of a rape, a diagnosis that could not be precisely confirmed.
https://www.paraguay.com/nacionales/ordenan-prision-para-hombre-que-golpeo-a-persona-trans-203204
https://www.ultimahora.com/justifico-redes-agresion-persona-trans-y-termino-detenido-n2974184.html
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dd5Tgahirg
https://twitter.com/livmediapy/status/1459371387110445060
https://twitter.com/YrenRotelapy/status/1459325496450117639
