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Career criminal dies in shootout with police officers
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Two men stuck up a Guadalupe bar early Wednesday, pistol-whipped the patrons and fled into a shootout with police. One of the robbery suspects died, and the second was hospitalized.
Also in the hospital was one of the policemen involved, identified as José Oviedo Ávila, who is being praised as a hero.
In an unrelated incident, judicial agents shot it out with a group of men in Hatillo, and one of the suspects suffered a fatal wound.
The shootout in El Alto de Guadalupe north of San José ended the criminal career of a man identified by the last names of Díaz Vargas who has been in trouble with the law since he was a juvenile offender in 1992, said the Fuerza Pública. The two men had been arrested a total of 40 times, said the police agency. Díaz, 23, did time for robbery and murder, the agency added.
Police said the shootout ended a crime wave in Coronado, Moravia and Guadalupe.
The shooting happened about 1 a.m. The second suspect, identified by the last names of Cruz López, suffered a wound to the back, police said.
Both men were on a motorcycle when police ordered them to halt not far from the bar. Instead, one of the men, believed to be Díaz, began shooting, police said.
Oviedo, the police officer, took one bullet in the chest but was spared injury by a protective vest. The most serious wound was to the neck for which he was undergoing an operation Wednesday. He was reported later to be in stable condition. Another unidentified police officer also was involved.
Juan Carlos Arias, deputy director of the Fuerza
Pública, said that officers recovered a .38-caliber firearm believed used in the robbery. Police also have a bulletin on the motorcycle the men were using as the result of information from witnesses at other robberies. They also found items taken from the bar patrons, they said.
Some of the bar patrons were treated because they had been hit in the head with the gun butt, police said.
Judicial agents are investigating the case.
The Fuerza Pública said that Díaz had been in trouble since 1992 when he faced an armed aggression charge. He still was a minor in 1995 when he was investigated for theft and aggravated robbery. His record shows that he was detained 30 times, said the Fuerza Pública, and that in 1997 he was sentenced to four years for aggravated robbery.
He served a lesser term because he was again held for aggravated robbery in 2000 and confined Jan. 18, 2001, on a murder charge, the agency said.
The second suspect, Cruz, has arrests for aggravated robbery and had been detained in Nicoya and Quepos on drug charges in 2008 and 2010, said the Fuerza Pública. This year he was detained for investigation of carrying an illegal knife.
The Judicial Investigating Organization said the shootout in Hatillo resulted in the death of a 22-year-old man with the last name of Vega. He suffered a bullet wound in the chest during the confrontation with judicial agents. He died a short time later at Hospital San Juan de Dios.
The agents involved were robbery investigators, judicial police said..
The shooting happened in the Ciudadela 15 de Setiembre section of Hatillo on the south side of San José. That case also is under investigation.
Eight persons nabbed as suspects in a Caja disability scam
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Judicial police detained eight persons, three women and five men, Wednesday in an investigation of false disability claims.
Investigators conducted five raids to make the arrests and gain evidence.
The individuals are charged with faking disability so they would get a 60 percent salary payment from the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social. At the same time they continued to work at their regular jobs, said the Poder Judicial.
The amount of money involved is 200 million colons or about $400,000, said the Poder Judicial.
Arrests were made in Barva de Heredia and in San Rafael de Alajuela.
The Judicial Investigating Organization said that two
individuals in Heredia recruited persons in an industrial zone in Alajuela and inserted their name in a computerized system that listed them as disabled.
The Caja routinely makes disability pay to workers after they have been off the job for three days. The usual amount is 60 percent of the reported salary.
The Judicial police said that the group was well organized with division of labor. Some of those arrested Wednesday created documents that falsely verified the illness or disability. Others just loaned the enterprise their bank account. Those who did so received some money and kicked back some to the originators of the scheme, said the Judicial police.
The Poder Judicial identified the men arrested by the last names of Benavides, Alvarado, Altamirano, Azofeifa and Zúñiga. The women were identified by the last names of Madrigal, Solís and Montero.
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