The interception in Barracas
On the morning of November 17, 2021, Lucas González and friends Julián Alejandro Salas, Niven Huanca Garnica and Joaquín Zúñiga Gómez were leaving a Barracas Central training facility in a Volkswagen Suran. Three members of the City Police's Brigade 6 were traveling in an unmarked Nissan without a rear license plate.
According to the findings later described by federal prosecutors, the officers got out and pointed weapons at the teenagers. Believing they were facing a robbery, the young men tried to leave. The officers fired at the Suran. One bullet struck Lucas in the head; he died the next day at El Cruce Hospital in Florencio Varela.
The attempted cover-up
The prosecution established that the case did not end with the shooting. Lucas's surviving friends were detained, and evidence was manipulated. Trial testimony described a replica firearm being placed inside the victims' car after the shooting.
Criminal responsibility for these later acts was individualized. Some officers were convicted of cover-up and unlawful detention, one officer was convicted of torture, and other defendants were acquitted. Those outcomes are not collapsed into the murder convictions.
The 2023 murder verdict
On July 11, 2023, Criminal and Correctional Oral Court No. 25 sentenced Juan José Nieva, Fabián Andrés López and Gabriel Alejandro Isassi to life imprisonment. The court found them coauthors of homicide aggravated by firearm use, treachery, racial hatred, the premeditated participation of two or more people, and abuse of their positions as members of a security force.
The same three officers were also convicted of attempted aggravated murder against Lucas's friends, unlawful deprivation of liberty and ideological falsification. The court separately imposed prison sentences on officers whose proven conduct concerned concealment, unlawful detention or torture and acquitted five defendants at that trial.
Appeal confirmed the life sentences
The defense appealed. On April 16, 2025, Chamber 3 of Argentina's National Criminal Cassation Court partially rejected the defense challenges and confirmed the life sentences of Isassi, Nieva and López. It also confirmed convictions against four officers for concealment-related conduct and acquitted two others in the appellate review.
The appellate ruling is important editorially because it means the page does not rely only on a first-instance verdict. At the same time, it does not imply that every officer originally accused was guilty: acquittals and differentiated roles remain part of the record.
Timeline
November 17, 2021: three plainclothes officers intercept the teenagers' car in Barracas and fire; Lucas is critically wounded.
November 18, 2021: Lucas dies at El Cruce Hospital.
July 11, 2023: three officers receive life sentences for aggravated murder; other defendants receive separate convictions or acquittals.
October 25, 2024: in a separate trial, officer Facundo Torres is sentenced to five years for his role in planting the replica weapon and falsifying evidence.
April 16, 2025: the National Criminal Cassation Court confirms the three life sentences.
Current status
The homicide is solved / adjudicated. The three officers who fired at the teenagers were convicted of aggravated murder and their life sentences were confirmed on appeal in 2025. Other police defendants had distinct outcomes, including convictions for concealment and torture and acquittals, which this file preserves rather than treating the police operation as a single undifferentiated finding of guilt.
Sources
- Ministerio Público Fiscal — 2023 verdict and factual record
- Ministerio Público Fiscal — cassation court confirms life sentences, April 16, 2025
- Ministerio Público Fiscal — separate conviction for planted evidence, October 25, 2024
- La Nación — appellate confirmation and differentiated outcomes, April 18, 2025