A death after ten days in intensive care
Talía Liliana Baduna, aged 29, died on the night of Wednesday, October 21, according to reporting from Granadero Baigorria in Santa Fe province. She had been hospitalized since October 12 in the intensive care unit of the Eva Perón Hospital, where she was treated for burns to her chest, arms, face and shoulders, with her airways damaged. From the start she required intubation and mechanical breathing support. Her body was sent to the Instituto Médico Legal for an autopsy conducted under the femicide protocol.[S1][S2]
Because she was pregnant, doctors performed an emergency cesarean section in the early hours of October 13. The baby, at 33 weeks of gestation, survived and is still in the neonatal unit. The attack took place shortly after 1:30 p.m. on Monday, October 12, at a house on Rafael Obligado street in the 400 block of Granadero Baigorria, at the edge of the Centro neighborhood. A neighbor heard her calls for help and, with another person, drove her to the Eva Perón Hospital, less than a kilometer away.[S1][S2]
The charge and what comes next
Maximiliano Gabriel Castagnino, 36, was taken to an imputative hearing on the afternoon of October 16 at the Centro de Justicia Penal while the victim was still hospitalized. Prosecutor Franco Tassini charged him with attempted femicide, and Judge Rodrigo Santana ordered pretrial detention until March 12. With Baduna's death, Castagnino must appear at a new hearing and the legal classification will be aggravated.[S1]
Understand this article deeper
According to the prosecution's case, Castagnino poured flammable liquid from an ethyl alcohol bottle over his partner's face, chest and arms and then threw an open-flame object, suspected to be a lighter, that started the fire, with what the prosecutor described as clear intent to kill her. Tassini argued that the attack occurred within a context of gender violence that lasted at least two years, while the accused and the victim lived together.[S1]
At the hearing, Castagnino spoke and tried to distance himself from responsibility for the attack. The prosecutor told Canal 3 that the accused limited himself to blaming the victim, reproaching her for what had happened and denying the events. Tassini stressed that those statements conflict with the objective evidence gathered by investigators.[S1]
