Chile: classes were suspended in ten schools and two universities in Valparaíso for the funeral of a dangerous drug trafficker

The ceremony was classified as “high risk” by the local police. We cannot allow drug trafficking to decide the school calendar,” said the trans-Andean Interior Minister.

Ten schools and two universities in the Chilean region of Valparaíso, some 120 kilometers from Santiago, suspended classes this Tuesday for fear of what could happen to the funeral of a drug trafficker who had been riddled with bullets last week in a settling of scores. . The ceremony was classified as “high risk” by the police, so educational establishments decided not to open their doors to students.

The man who was buried was Camilo Rojas Chepulich, a well-known criminal nicknamed Ñaju, who was shot to death on Wednesday of last week in front of the Las Acacias school in Valparaíso. He was parked in a car around two in the afternoon, during school hours, when three people approached him from another car and shot him at least 20 times.

These types of funerals are considered high risk by the police, because different groups of criminals occupy the neighborhoods and take over the territories. They informally block the streets, launch fireworks and shots into the air, and carry out caravans in cars, among other actions.

“We deeply regret that due to this high-risk funeral we have to make these types of decisions, but certainly the integrity of our educational communities will always be our main objective,” argued Daslav Mihovilovic, executive director of the Valparaíso Local Public Education Service.

They suspended classes in 10 schools and 2 universities in Valparaíso for the funeral of a drug trafficker

However, the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, was against the decision: “Police surveillance needs to be strengthened and coordination improved so that schools are not affected,” she said. And she continued: “We cannot allow drug trafficking to decide the school calendar. In Chile we are not going to accept that this happens.” The truth is that the schools decided to close and the students could not enter classes.

Meanwhile, the funeral was carried out without major inconvenience. According to the newspaper La Tercera, there were no incidents. The police, who controlled access to the cemetery, only arrested one person for “carrying fireworks,” reported Captain Víctor Torres, of the First South Valparaíso Police Station.

Family and friends lowered the coffin of El Ñaju from the vehicle, who was buried in the Parque del Consuelo, in the upper part of the cemetery. Those close to him say that it was for his grandmother to see, who would live in the upper part of the neighborhood.

Ñaju, the Chilean drug trafficker shot in Valparaiso

Before being assassinated, it is believed that Chepulich would have participated in the crime of “El Reguetonero”, one of the members of one of the rival gangs in the area. It would have been as a result of that confrontation that his enemies killed him, in a kind of reckoning.

El Ñaju, as reported by the Chilean news site, had five processes in the courts of justice. The first was in April 2018, after he was detected at a police checkpoint while driving a car with an adulterated license plate. In August of the same year, he was arrested for possession of firearms, being dismissed in 2020.

In May 2019, he was prosecuted for the crime of arson and simple threat, while in April 2020 he was arrested for violating health regulations during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Finally, in April 2022, he was arrested for a simple threat against a woman who attended a minimarket in the Viento Sur neighborhood, in Playa Ancha. The defendant reached a simplified procedure and publicly apologized to the victim.

DB

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