A suspect in the June attack against the chairman of Medellin’s city council turned himself in to authorities Wednesday morning, less than two weeks after unknown gunmen opened fire on the politician’s car, according to a press release from city’s ombudsman’s office.
Eighteen-year-old Yeferson Ospina Gonzalez walked into the city’s ombudsman’s office at 11:30AM, accompanied by a lawyer, and handed himself over to authorities.
According to the young suspect, he “decided to turn himself in because [he] was scared” that the police would capture him, after a $50,000 reward was offered by President Alvaro Uribe, a former mayor of Medellin, for information leading to the arrest of the attackers.
“That would have complicated my life even more,” the Medellin youth admitted.
Ospina Gonzalez was taken to a hearing at the Antioquian prosecutor’s office later in the day.
According to Ospina Gonzalez, the June 26 incident in which John Jaime Moncada Ospina, the city council chairman, was shot, was not meant to target the chairman, but was a simple robbery.
“I am very sorry for this. We were not aiming for the chairman. If we were trying to kill the chairman, I would not have turned myself in. Instead, we were trying to rob him. We did not know who he was,” the suspect claimed.
In the evening of June 26, city council Chairman John Jaime Moncada Ospina was driving through the upper class neighborhood of Laureles in Medellin when unknown assailants opened fire on his car. His bodyguards returned fire and killed one of the attackers.
The chairman suffered a gunshot wound in the incident, and is still recovering.