Santo Domingo, DR. – The Collegiate Court of the Hermanas Mirabal province sentenced a man to 30 years in prison for attacking with “devil’s acid” and causing the death of Yanelis Arias López on August 20, 2021, in the municipality of Tenares.
Judges Manuel Antonio Carela, Biannelys Martínez Calvo, and Felicia Núñez de Jesús accepted the requests of the Public Prosecutor to impose the maximum penalty on Agustín de Jesús Pimentel Luna (Caché), who was charged with spraying the corrosive substance on Arias López.
In addition, they imposed a compensation of seven million pesos in favor of the victim’s relatives and the payment of the legal costs of the trial.
De Jesús Pimentel will have to serve the sentence at the La Isleta Correction and Rehabilitation Center in Moca, Espaillat province, where he has been confined since the coercive measure was imposed.
During the trial, the prosecution proved the accused’s criminal responsibility with different evidence, evidence accepted and validated by the judges to pronounce the verdict.
The team of prosecutors was composed of Claudia Cecilia Román and Yesiely Fabré Fernández, coordinator of the Integrated Attention Unit for Gender Violence, Intrafamilial and Sexual Offenses in this jurisdiction, as well as Elvira Rodríguez and Eduardo Velázquez, who joined the process representing the Litigation Unit of the General Prosecution Directorate of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Pimentel Luna was charged with committing acts of torture and barbarity with premeditation and stalking, crimes provided for and punished in articles 303, 303 numeral 4, ordinal 10 of the Dominican Criminal Code, modified by Law 24-97.
The head prosecutor of Hermanas Mirabal, Zoila Rodríguez Ynfante, said that this decision brings justice to a barbarous act that shocked the Hermanas Mirabal province and all of Dominican society. “In the land of butterflies, birthplace of heroines, we reject any criminal action that harms women,” she said, highlighting the work of the prosecutors and the decision of the court.
Yanelis Arias López died on September 3 last year, as a result of septic shock caused by infections in her burn wounds, after spending 14 days receiving medical attention at the Burn Unit of the Doctor Ney Arias Lora Hospital in Santo Domingo.
