After a week of uncertainty and despair, Agostina Madeleine Vega (14) was found murdered on Saturday in a vast open field in the Ampliación Ferreyra neighborhood of Córdoba. However, the search continues, as it has been confirmed that her body was dismembered; this Sunday, investigators continued combing the area in an attempt to recover all of her remains.
Meanwhile, the sole suspect detained in the case—Claudio Gabriel Barrelier (33)—had to be admitted to the hospital within the Bouwer prison complex after the facility’s doctors and psychologists detected suicidal thoughts and ideation.
The Córdoba Penitentiary Service reported that, in light of this situation and in accordance with established procedures, a protocol was preventively activated to safeguard his physical and psychological well-being. The only suspect currently detained for the femicide is now hospitalized under custody in the modular hospital located within Penitentiary Complex No. 1, “Reverendo Padre Luchesse,” in Bouwer, where he is receiving specialized care, medication, and daily monitoring from mental health professionals affiliated with the Provincial Ministry of Health.
Furthermore, authorities refuted earlier reports that Barrelier had actually attempted suicide while in prison. That rumor had circulated earlier in the day and had been corroborated to *Clarín* by the lawyers representing Gabriel Vega, Agostina’s father.
Ultimately, however, the Penitentiary Service confirmed that they were indeed compelled to activate the protocol—hospitalizing and medicating him—to prevent him from inflicting self-harm or taking his own life.
The last known image of Agostina alive was captured on Saturday night, when she entered the home of the sole suspect, Claudio Barrelier. The accused initially denied that the girl in the footage was her, but on Friday, he admitted that the girl in question was, in fact, the missing teenager.
Since that day, search operations were intensified across a vast, 240-hectare open field—deep within which, on Saturday, Agostina’s remains were finally discovered. The 14-year-old girl had last been seen on Saturday, May 23, at 10:30 p.m. in the General Mosconi neighborhood of Córdoba. She said she was heading to her grandfather’s deli—located on the same block as the house where she lived—but she never arrived.
She got into a *remis* (private taxi) and traveled to the Cofico neighborhood, where Barrelier lives. She told the driver that she was going to surprise her mother—the same thing she had told her friends in an audio message: “I don’t know why I have to go with my… with my mom’s boyfriend to pull off a surprise for my mom. I have to sneak out.”
Just hours before the one-week mark of her disappearance was reached, her body was found in a vacant lot in Ampliación Ferreyra, 17 kilometers from Barrelier’s home—the place where surveillance cameras had last captured Agostina, though she was never seen leaving the premises.
The lawyers representing Agostina’s father also noted that the court had rejected a request to allow Melisa Heredia—Agostina’s mother—to join the proceedings as a co-plaintiff. The woman had to be sedated once again after being informed on Saturday that her daughter had been found dead.
