For years, the Colombian Luis Alberto ‘Lucho’ Herrera fell in love with Latin Americans uploaded to his bicycle. He won the 1987 laundry, won in his native country, celebrated stages in the Tour … However, his name returns to the foci now by a judicial investigation that relates him to an alleged kidnapping and murder of four people more than two decades ago in Colombia.
Cycling lovers remember how in 1987 He became a legend in Madrid after winning the duel with the Frenchman Laurent Fignon. Also how he won three stages of the Tour de France, three others in the Giro de Italia, two in Lavuelta and how he was crowned by the mountain champion in them.
Herrera also won the Daashiné criterium, the mythical race of the French Alps, in 1988 and 1991, where demonstrated its quality as a climberbeing one of the best of his time.
Lucho retired in the early 90s and led a life away from the spotlights in his native Fusagasugá. The money he won as a cyclist invested it in land, cattle, transport and farms, thus riding a business with trusted employees while he carried the management. He even had a passing hotel that he had to sell after suffering several robberies.
Investigated by the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office
The Lavuelta champion is being investigated after Judge María del Pilar Bocarejo, of the Fourth Criminal Court with a function of knowledge of Fusagasugá, city of the department of Cundinamarca from where he is a native and resides Herrera, ordered the prosecution to put the magnifying glass on him for A case of forced disappearance of four neighbors over 20 years ago.
In an anticipated sentence to one of the paramilitaries involved in this case, the judge explained that the convicted person, Luis Fernando Gómez Flórez, “He made direct signaling against Lucho Herrera in the investigation diligence of October 11, 2022”according to a document released by local media.
The alleged events occurred in 2002. According to Gómez’s version, better known as’ Ojitos’, and another exparamilitary called Óscar Andrés Huertas, ‘Genuer Attend a commission from Lucho Herrera.
According to Luis Fernando Gómez, the goal was “send to clean (kidnap and kill) to a people who were a guerrilla militia “. They were the brothers Víctor Manuel and José del Carmen Rodríguez Martínez, Gonzalo Guerrero Jiménez and Diuviseldo Torres Vega, neighbors of the athlete who disappeared “on October 23, 2002, in similar circumstances,” says the judicial document.
The reason why Herrera wanted to get rid of those neighbors would be strip their land for real estate businesses that he had after retiring from cycling.
After that investigation comes to light, the exciclist has defended himself from the accusations: “I have never belonged to criminal organizations or intended to cause any person to any. My life I have dedicated to sport and, after my retirement from professional cycling, to work honestly. Emphatically rejected the imputations that intend to mitigate my name And my career as a citizen, worker and father. “
