On the night of March 31, 2025, Nicolás Díaz returned to a gas station in Maipú, an area of Santiago, Chile, to pick up his car. Hours earlier, he had had to leave it there because one of its tires had gone flat while he was taking his daughters to school. When he returned for the vehicle, a group of men intercepted him to steal it.
According to his account, one of the robbers grabbed him by the neck and hit him on the head. Díaz handed over the car, but managed to confront one of the men who failed to escape. The man was subdued, and that was when a sequence of events began that would completely change the teacher’s life.
The Prosecutor’s Office maintains that Díaz continued hitting the man for about 15 minutes, even after he had already been subdued. The teacher acknowledges that he assaulted him, but says he acted out of fear and because he was afraid the other robbers would return.
He then called a friend, who arrived accompanied by another person. According to Díaz’s version, the three of them put the young man in a vehicle, initially intending to take him to a medical center. However, during the journey they realized that he was no longer responding. The body ended up being abandoned at Cuesta Barriga, a mountain road located west of Santiago.
The body was found on April 18, 2025, more than two weeks later, by a person passing through the area. Díaz was arrested and spent one year and two months in pretrial detention on charges of kidnapping with homicide. He was later released, but remained subject to full house arrest while awaiting trial.
More than a year later, the teacher broke his silence and said he regretted his decisions. He is currently under full house arrest and awaiting trial, where his responsibility for the events will be determined. The Prosecutor’s Office is maintaining the charges, and it will ultimately be up to the courts to establish what happened that night and whether his actions can be considered legitimate self-defense or constitute a crime.