Would-be assassin pulls trigger on Argentine leader... but gun jams
THIS is the terrifying moment an assassin’s gun jams as he tries to shoot Argentina’s vicepresident at point-blank.
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner had been greeting supporters outside her home in Buenos Aries at around 9pm last night when the gunman confronted her.
The 69-year-old can be seen in footage covering her face with her hands and ducking as an arm thrusts through the alarmed crowd of well-wishers and points the loaded pistol directly in her face.
But the gun failed to fire even though the trigger was pulled. Police said it had been loaded with five bullets. The 35-year-old gunman was then overpowered by the vice-president’s security within seconds.
He was arrested and taken into custody. A .32 calibre Bersa semiautomatic handgun was found at the scene.
Security sources identified the man as Fernando Andre Sabag Montiel, right, a Brazilian street vendor who has lived in Argentina since
1998, a security ministry official said. Government officials have called it an assassination attempt on Mrs Fernandez de Kirchner, who is currently embroiled in long-running corruption allegations which she denies. They are investigating if Montiel was a lone gunman or part of a larger organisation. Local reports said Montiel, who worked as a driver, had a neo-Nazi ‘ Black Sun’ tattoo around his left elbow. Police are attempting to establish a motive for the attack on the Leftleaning politician, who was also Argentina’s president from 2007 to 2015 and its first lady for four years before that.
After the attempted shooting, president Alberto Fernandez, who is not related to the vice-president, said in a national broadcast that it was ‘the most serious incident since we recovered democracy’ in 1983 after a military dictatorship and urged political leaders, and society at large, to repudiate the attempted shooting.