Worst case scenario home invasion shooting

The video is an interview of “Baby” Etchecopar. This guy is a jorunalist/actor that was involved in a pretty brutal home invasion in Buenos Aires.

The video is in Spanish unfortunately but it he explains how he survived during the kind of nightmare many of us often think about for hours: What do you do when you see a guy walk into your kitchen, Glock 9mm in hand and tells you they have your family hostage upstairs. Baby was eating chicken in his kitchen when that happened.

 At gunpoint he’s forced upstairs, pushed and pistol whipped over the head, as the criminal takes him upstairs he tells him they will rape his daughter. Upstairs the nightmare continues. In the bedroom he finds two more men, along with his son and his girlfriend, his wife and his pregnant daughter. One of them is hitting his daughter on the belly while putting a gun to his son’s head. The other one also threatens them with a gun while beating his wife. As soon as the two criminals in the room see Baby one of them recognizes him. He has a tv and radio show and is often outspoken about the crime problem in the country and the importance of self defense. “That’s Etchecopar, shoot him!” one of them says. The criminal that keeps him at gunpoint pulls the trigger but nothing happens. He hits Etchecopar with the pistol in the throat and Baby goes down. The criminal racks the slide and a round drops to the ground. Etchecopar hears a shot being fired. He doesn’t know due to the confusion but his son was just shot. As Etchcopar falls he goes for a gun he keeps in a night table. 14 years ago a former guerilla commander bought it for him as a present “You need a gun. One day it will save your life”. The man that said that was Rodolfo Galimberti, former Montonero, an Argentine leftist urban guerrilla and subversive group. Etchecopar (a right wing conservative) had heavily criticized Galimberti in his show but one day they met and started talking. Galimberti said he heard what Etchecopar had said about him and that he was right in his claims. They ended up becoming friends and went to the range where Galimberti bought the gun for Etchecopar. The Glock .40 was then loaded and left in the night table, not a round fired.

Etchecopar picks the Glock from the night table and starts shooting. He fires ten shots and hits one criminal eight times. The other criminals shoot back as they retreat, wounding Etchecopar in both legs and one hand. As Etchecopar goes down his son picks a 357 magnum revolver and chases the criminals. As he leaves the bedroom and walks into the dresser he’s received by a volley of gunfire, getting hit multiple times. He walks back into the room, blood squirting from a chest wound. Etchecopar drags himself towards the fleeing criminals but stops when he notices one of his legs is barely attached through some strings of flesh and tendons. Probably shot with the 357 magnum, his leg was almost blown off with an exposed fracture, nearly amputating the leg.  

A total of 37 rounds where fired by Etchecopar and the criminals. Some time afterwards a police officer arrives. Etchecopar is still conscious and asks for a tourniquet, which the police officer improvises with a shirt, saving his life. His son was shot four times and has a punctured lung, but survives after being hospitalized for 15 days. The criminal shot by Etchecopar died and the ones that escaped were captured later.

Some points:

*Etchecopar had the right tool for the job but no proper training other than some shooting instructions he got for a movie he did where blanks were fired. In spite of that, Etchecopar performed very well given the hopeless circumstance he was in.

*Etchecopar says he felt as in a movie. It didn’t seem real, but he vividly remembers the smell of gunpowder, the smell of blood, the plaster blowing off the walls as rounds impact around him

*His son almost died for chasing after fleeing criminals. Not a good idea. Once criminals are on the run and escaping, let the police handle it. Don’t chase them.

*Etchecopar says he died a little bit himself that day because of the life he took. At the same time he admits there was nothing he could have done better. The criminals started shooting after he had given them everything he had.

FerFAL