Candela Romero, femicide victim. Candela was killed in 2022.
The trial over the killing of Candela Berenice Romero—a 16-year-old shot dead in November 2022 in western Rosario—ended without convictions for the direct perpetrators. Judges ruled that the evidence presented did not meet the level of certainty required to hold the three defendants responsible as co-authors of the homicide.
Judges Hebe Marcogliese, Paola Aguirre and Nicolás Vico Gimena acquitted Nicolás Daniel Spalleta (32), Franco Darío Aguiar (32) and Gonzalo Ezequiel Villalba (24), despite prosecutors seeking life sentences and arguing the attack was a contract-style execution in a setting shaped by drug-market violence.
Evidence reviewed and what the ruling decided
According to the court’s assessment, the key material in the file—ballistics analysis and data extracted from mobile phones—was not sufficient to establish the defendants’ direct participation beyond reasonable doubt. As a result, the murder charge did not stand.
The ruling, however, imposed prison terms of six to seven years for related offenses, including concealing vehicles and weapons and illegal possession.
Candela was attacked shortly after midnight on November 2, 2022, at her home on Pasaje Achira 600 in the Antártida Argentina neighborhood. Prosecutors described an assault in which at least three armed men arrived by car, opened fire, and chased her inside the house to an upstairs room, where she was shot in the head. The autopsy concluded she died from multiple gunshot wounds.
In court, prosecutors sought to link the homicide to a broader chain of violent incidents occurring around the same time and to disputes within Rosario’s local drug market. The defense challenged the strength of the forensic conclusions and emphasized that the alleged instigator was never identified. With the acquittals on the murder count, the case remains without convictions for the direct killing, while the investigation into a possible instigator remains open.
