By The Star Staff
The island Senate will continue hearings next week on the circumstances that allowed Hermes Ávila Vázquez, who is accused of killing Ivette Joan Meléndez Vega, to go free despite his criminal background.
The case of Ávila Vázquez has been full of discoveries, among which are the multiple requests he made to different governing administrations to be released from prison under Act 25, as well as an alleged relationship with a correctional nurse and his criminal background. He appeared at a hearing Tuesday.
Ávila Vázquez, a convicted murderer, was released from prison under an early release program that allows inmates to leave jail if they suffer certain terminal conditions. However, after he was released, he allegedly killed Meléndez Vega in April of this year. Ávila Vázquez had been diagnosed as paraplegic even though it was later found that he could walk. Since then, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Department (DCR) has been the target of criticism for allowing his release.
Now, a new allegation has emerged in the investigation. It indicates that the accused, who will face a trial starting on Aug. 19, worked as a prison guard in the DCR and that his father was superintendent of penal institutions.
The information was allegedly revealed in an agency report.
“I am asking for Hermes’ personal file during the time he was employed,” Independent Sen. José Vargas Vidot said. “I am asking for the file of a family member who has spoken with the system. […] The [confidential sources say] that while Hermes was working as a prison officer for four years […] the reality is that it is said that he was engaged in drug trafficking, it is said that he had links with the entry of drugs and other things.”
Corrections Secretary Ana Escobar Pabón will be summoned to the public hearings next Tuesday and Wednesday; as will the firm UtiCorp and several doctors.
Vargas Vidot said his information contains data that would be “devastating” for both Escobar Pabón and Physician Correctional, the company in charge of operating the prison health system. However, he previously described the results of a report prepared by UtiCorp, the company hired to oversee correctional health services, as a disaster.
Among the information handled by the senator is evidence that under Correctional Health Services, Ávila Vázquez requested passes in 2011 and executive amnesty in 2012, both of which were denied in 2013. In 2015, he also requested passes that were denied for not being meritorious, a situation that was repeated in 2017 and 2019.
“No one in their right mind can let a situation of this nature pass without linking it to some network of corruption within the system,” Vargas Vidot said.
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