A former Chilean police special forces captain has been found guilty of assault after permanently blinding a woman he shot in the face with a teargas canister during a wave of protests in 2019.
The court in the capital Santiago found that Patricio Maturana had committed “unlawful coercion resulting in serious and very serious injuries” to Fabiola Campillai who was walking to a bus stop when she was struck. The public prosecutor has requested a 12-year prison sentence.
The incident happened on 26 November 2019, amid a police crackdown on street demonstrations which had shaken the country. Campillai was on her way to work a night shift at a factory in Santiago.
As she turned a corner, she was hit in the face by a teargas canister fired by Maturana, one of a group of officers huddled beside an underpass.
Campillai was permanently and irreversibly blinded by the impact, which left her requiring weeks of surgeries and deprived her of her senses of taste and smell.
“[Maturana’s] intention was not to use the weapon according to its [purpose] – to disperse and dissuade crowds with teargas – but rather to do her harm,” said prosecutor Marcela Nilo as she read out the verdict on Thursday.
Police protocol at the time dictated that teargas cylinders, which were frequently used to quell the often violent protests, should be discharged at a 45-degree angle.
However, Maturana, who was only dismissed eight months after the incident following an internal police investigation, shot directly at Campillai from just 50 metres away and at an angle of between zero and five degrees, the court heard.
Campillai’s ordeal has seen her become one of Chile’s most recognisable victims of police brutality, and she was elected as an independent senator representing Santiago in legislative elections in November 2021.
Both Chilean and international human rights organisations have condemned the heavy-handed police response to the 2019 protests, which left 30 people dead and an estimated 3,000 injured.
Chile’s interior minister, Izkia Siches, who assumed the role in March this year when 36-year-old Gabriel Boric became Chile’s youngest ever president, said that the government has “a strict commitment to human rights and particularly the victims”.
Campillai and other members of her family are suing the state for damages separately, seeking more than 2.2bn pesos (£2.1m) in compensation.
Maturana will be sentenced on 10 October.
