FILE PHOTO: Argentine star Lionel Messi during the 2022 World Cup. —AFP
“Messi, we are waiting for you. Javkin is a narco, he is not going to take care of you, ”said the handwritten message left on the ground by the men who fired 14 bullets at the metal facade of the supermarket early Thursday morning.
Pablo Javkin is the mayor of Messi’s hometown of Rosario, where the supermarket is located, some 200 miles northwest of Buenos Aires.
Javkin confirmed that the supermarket belonged to the family of Antonela Roccuzzo, who shares three children with the soccer superstar, and said the aim of the attack was to “create chaos in the city.”
“Here what is sought is the repercussion, it is perfidious,” he said. “What story goes viral more quickly in the world than an attack on Messi?”
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A witness confirmed seeing the two men arrive on a motorcycle shortly before 3:00 am. One of them got out, fired, dropped the note and they both fled.
“This has been going on for some time,” Javkin said. “We have five security forces operating in Rosario, but they can do this because nobody is after them.”
The deputy chief of the provincial police, Iván González, told the Cadena 3 television network that the message “was not a threat” but an attempt to “get attention.”
He said that no one was injured as no one was at the scene at that time.
The prosecutor in charge of the case, Federico Rebola, told reporters that there were no known threats against the Roccuzzo family.
“We are concerned, this has a huge impact, we have the video images and we are looking for more cameras,” he said.
Rosario is a port city on the Paraná River that has gradually become a drug trafficking nerve center and the most violent city in Argentina, with 287 murders in 2022.
The centrist mayor, the leftist governor of Santa Fe state, Omar Perotti, and the center-left national government regularly hand over responsibility for counternarcotics measures and the use of the city’s security forces to each other.
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In a meeting this week between municipal, provincial and national security forces, Provincial Minister Claudio Brilloni said he had “urged federal forces for greater collaboration, commitment and participation” in the fight against violence and crime in Rosario. .
Among the right-wing opposition, two declared candidates for the presidential elections in October asked the military police for help in combating drug trafficking in Rosario.
“The situation is complicated in Rosario… the drug traffickers have won,” said Security Minister Aníbal Fernández.
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