A fire at a Buenos Aires hotel that left three women dead and another injured last week is under investigation, an Argentine criminal court confirmed to NBC News on Friday. The victims were all lesbians, according to local LGBTQ groups.
The court identified the three women who died in the May 6 fire as Mercedes Roxana Figueroa, Pamela Fabiana Cobbas and Andrea Amarante; Sofia Castro Riglos was identified as the injured woman. Contact information for the prosecutor’s office assigned to the case was not immediately available.
The court identified the suspect as Justo Fernando Barrientos. An investigation is ongoing, the court said, but local media reported that the man intentionally set fire to the room where the women were staying, also causing damage to other parts of the building. LGBTQ groups in the country have said they believe the attack was a hate crime.
Protesters took the streets in Buenos Aires in the week following the incident, some holding Pride flags and signs calling the attack “lesbophobic.” Others have called out President Javier Milei, who, upon taking office last year, shut down the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity, among other government programs.
At a news conference Monday, Manuel Adorni, a spokesperson for Milei, called the attack "terrible" but said he "didn't like to define" the incident as an attack on a particular group. He also responded to a tweet that described the attack as a "lesbicide" with an image of a Spanish dictionary saying the word did not exist.
Maribe Sgariglia, the secretary for international relations at Federación Argentina LGBT, said in an email to NBC News that the organization has been in contact with the surviving victim.
“Currently, together with other organizations and activists, we are trying to obtain the necessary help and support so that the woman who survived has a place to live and the support of the state to be able to move forward,” Sgariglia wrote in Spanish.
In a statement posted to Instagram on May 6, the group said the women were living at the hotel where the attack took place and described it as “one of the most abhorrent hate crimes in recent years.”
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