Off-duty police officer kills motorcycle robber during attempted holdup in La Matanza, Argentina.

NEWS:

An off-duty Buenos Aires City police officer shot and killed a 22-year-old woman during an attempted motorcycle robbery in González Catán, a locality in La Matanza, Buenos Aires province, Argentina. The shooting was captured by security cameras and later became the central evidence in a criminal investigation that moved beyond a simple self-defense claim.

The officer was identified in subsequent reporting as Héctor Camejo, 48, an inspector with the Buenos Aires City Police. He was off duty and in civilian clothes when the confrontation happened near midnight on Wednesday, April 29, at or near the streets Montgolfier, Da Vinci and Zeppelin, according to the locations reported in the case file reconstruction.

Security footage shows a motorcycle with two people approaching Camejo as he walked in the street. Reporting based on the investigation says he was speaking on his phone moments before the motorcycle closed in. The officer later told authorities that the two people tried to rob him and that one of them pointed what appeared to be a gun at him.

Camejo opened fire with his service weapon, a 9mm Beretta pistol. Later reporting said he emptied the magazine, with the number of shots described as 17 in the judicial reconstruction. Investigators recovered ten spent 9mm shell casings, three projectiles and a replica firearm at the scene. The replica was later described as plastic.

The video records the violent part of the encounter directly. It shows the motorcycle approaching, the officer firing, the woman being hit and collapsing, and the male accomplice moving away from the scene. In one of the published videos, the man can be heard shouting for help after the woman falls. He then fled.

Buenos Aires Province police officers went to the area after reports of multiple gunshots. They found the woman gravely wounded near Da Vinci and Montgolfier. She was taken to René Favaloro Hospital in La Matanza, where she arrived dead or died shortly after being transferred, according to the reporting on the case.

At first, authorities reportedly treated the wounded woman as a possible robbery victim. That changed after investigators reviewed security footage and after Camejo appeared at a local police station. He turned himself in and told officers that he had been intercepted by a pair of motorcycle robbers, that he believed he was being threatened with a firearm, and that he fired his service weapon during the confrontation.

The woman was described in later reporting as 22 years old. Her identity was not included in the most reliable accessible reports reviewed for this article, so her name is not being published here. The male accomplice had not been publicly identified in the accessible reports reviewed. Investigators believed he may have been wounded because of blood traces found along the route where he escaped.

The motorcycle was found abandoned nearby. Reports described it as a 110cc motorcycle without a visible license plate. A black cap was also reported among the items collected at the scene in one account, but that detail was not central to the later legal framing of the case.

The investigation was assigned to the homicide unit in La Matanza and prosecutor Adrián Arribas. Camejo was initially held after presenting himself to authorities. He was accused in the case under a homicide theory linked to the use of a firearm, and later reporting described the accusation as homicide in excess of legitimate self-defense.

That distinction matters because the case is not being treated only as an officer stopping an attempted robbery. Prosecutors and judicial sources questioned whether the number of shots and the sequence shown in the videos were legally justified after the immediate threat was assessed. The reported presence of a plastic replica firearm supports Camejo’s claim that he believed he was being threatened, but it also became part of the analysis over whether the response was proportionate.

Camejo acknowledged firing the shots when he appeared before authorities. He said he feared for his life after seeing what he believed was a gun. His defense requested his release after he gave a statement. The latest reliable reports reviewed did not confirm a final court decision on that request.

The security videos were incorporated into the case file. They are also the clearest public evidence of the confrontation. The footage shows the motorcycle approach, the gunfire, the woman falling and the male accomplice leaving the scene. It does not independently prove every earlier claim about intent, planning or what the officer perceived in the seconds before he fired. Those parts depend on the investigation, the officer’s statement, the recovered replica gun and the judicial review of the footage.

The known evidence supports that the woman and her accomplice approached Camejo on a motorcycle, that he fired his service weapon repeatedly, that she was fatally wounded, that a replica firearm was recovered, and that the male accomplice escaped. The unresolved legal issue is whether Camejo’s gunfire was justified self-defense or an excessive use of lethal force during an attempted robbery.

News story written by DarkGore.

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