50 Seconds Recap: Who Killed Fernando Baez Sosa?

Adolescent boys are full of testosterone, might, and sometimes full of rage. This is a very delicate time of life—boys on the cusp of turning into men, into responsible individuals with a sense of right and wrong, but sometimes before they can reach there, they slip. 50 Seconds: The Fernando Baez Sosa Case is an example of violence going beyond the grasp of control as a group of young men, who are rugby players, out on a fun night on vacation, end up killing someone who is just like them—a boy out on a fun night on vacation. It is tragic to point fingers and segregate the “angels” and “demons” in this story, as pointed out by one of Fernando’s friends; the surveillance of media gets the best of the narrative, the legal system puts up a just fight, and the parents fall apart—some in denial and some in grief. If you ask me, the entire situation of needing to ask for justice after a homicide feels heartbreaking since the people involved all belong to the age group of 18-21 years old with their whole futures lying ahead of them. Yet, what took place on January 18, 2020, outside of the club La Brique in Villa Gessell, Argentina, took a grave turn of events, impacting multiple young lives, with one light going out—Fernando Baez Sosa. 

What Is The Story About?

50 Seconds is based on a true incident and made in a documentary format with a fair balance of interviews, both from the victim’s side as well as the convicts’ side. The lawyers involved, Fernando Burlando for Fernando and Hugo for the convicts, figure in considerably, giving their accounts of the story. The parents, the kids, and the people who witnessed the crime that night step forward to recreate a story of the night left for the audience to judge. The sheer horror of looking at the faces that may have gone into the violent feat of rage and killed a young boy will leave you feeling incapacitated that you cannot, after all, turn back time and prevent all of this from happening. Let’s take a closer look at who Fernando Baez Sosa was, and how the events unfolded on the night of his murder. 

What was Fernando up to on the night of his murder?

Fernando was a kid from a humble background, a kid with a “little bit of attitude,” but also joyful, compassionate, and full of life. His mother, Graciela, is a live-in caretaker who enrolled Fernando into a scholarship program in which he earned a seat in a private school selected among 400 kids. He made friends at the school; he played football and was always into planning things and being active. In the final year of his school, as he turns eighteen, he tells his mother that he wants to go on a trip with his friends before they choose their own paths in their lives. The group plans to go to Villa Gesell, a party town by the beach known for its nightlife. It is summer; they spend their days at the hostel pre-gaming before they hit a relatively popular club called La Brique. At La Brique, the group split up into smaller groups until around four in the morning, when one of Fernando’s friends felt someone punching him in the back. When he turned around to face the guy, the guy claimed that he had no issue with him but pointed to Fernando. By then, Fernando was already hit. The boys were escorted out of the club by the bouncers, and upon asking, Fernando told his friend that one of the boys had someone spill a drink on him, and when they attacked the drink-spiller, Fernando verbally stood up to him, which led to the strike. At this point Fernando and his friends are probably thinking good riddance, but soon, the boys in the club who attacked him are escorted outside by the bouncers. This is the moment from which the narratives start to split. This is the moment, around 4:40 AM, when the boys will come on Fernando, pin him to the ground, and kick him to death. Among the group of ten involved in the attack, everyone tried to cover up their tracks, pledged a vow of silence, and tried their level best to create plausible deniability of the event. Some, like Maximo, fled from the scene. Lucas and Blas went to a local McDonald’s, and all of them went back to their rental house eventually, laughing the night off as a drunken haze where they smashed a guy real bad. The panic did not set in until later when the group found out that the guy they were hitting was in fact dead; there was a moment of incredulity, which eventually led into a pact of silence—like team players, they decided to keep their mouths shut until the police turned up to the house the next day to arrest them.

What Really Happened on the Night of Fernando’s Murder?

With such a blatant truth of death, multiple accounts rush in to cover the sheer brutality of the event. The parents and the friends of the convicts all rushed in to create a cover that protects the kids, yet on the other hand, Fernando’s mother’s pain was searing; it traveled through the media to the crowd, which boomed with a demand for justice. The kids were held up but eventually released after a brief twenty-five minutes of statement taking. There was not enough proof against them; the trial did not take place until January 25, 2023, when the picture started clearing up. 

The group was being accused of aggravated homicide—which is premeditated murder  for which the punishment can very well be life sentence. While at first it seemed like it was a fight culminating in a murder, what happened that night is actually quite different. The group walked outside of the club and found Fernando with his friends; they pinned him to the ground, hurled racial slurs at him, and started beating him up. Maximo Thomson is the one who took the lead on this, while Lucas Petrossi kept recording the event on his cellphone. Others formed a wall so that the public could not intervene, and they were not anyway; it is the age of Instagram reels, so everyone kept at it. There were multiple strikes at Fernando from multiple boys, including Maximo, Ciro, and the others. After Fernando became unresponsive, Maximo fled, wiped the blood off his knuckles, and went to the house. The others returned eventually, while Lucas and Blas had a meal at the local McDonald’s. By six in the morning, the police turned up at the house to arrest the group, who were pretending to be normal and took a vow of silence not to tell each other off.

What Was the Verdict?

After facing a Covid fade-out, the convicts were finally sentenced on February 6, 2023. All eight defendants were found guilty of the double aggravated homicide of Fernando Baez Sosa. Five of the eight, including Enzo Comelli, Ciro and Luciano Pertossi, Maximo Thomsen and Matias Benicelli were convicted as co‑perpetrators of doubly‑aggravated homicide and sentenced to life imprisonment, which is the highest penalty in Argentina. The other three, Ayrton Viollaz, Blas Cinalli, and Lucas Pertossi were sentenced to fifteen years for being accessories to the murder. The plea from the defendant’s lawyer, Hugo, and Emilia Petrossi, who is sister to the Petrossis and Blas’ cousin, was denied since one of the attackers gave his hoodie to Juan to keep safe before he went on to attack Fernando. 

Fernando Burlando, the celebrity lawyer who Fernando looked up to, wants to contest for life imprisonment for the rest of the three; the trial can be taken to the Argentinian Supreme Court for that. Fernando was of Paraguayan descent—an immigrant who was moderately privileged. The attacks from privileged, influential kids from Zatare perhaps can spark a discourse beyond just a murder and ask us to look at deeper-rooted issues. “Justice” is barely a word, and sometimes as close as we can get to it is a sentence—a sentence that lasts for life. A sentence that had to be given because one life was lost forever in the span of fifty seconds. This does not wipe away the loss, the pain, or the ruination that the families face, and I am talking about Graciela as well as the convict’s family. The parents push for denial, support their kids obligately, and quietly break in silence. It reminds me of the father from Adolescence to see Mauro Petrossi, who speaks about mishearing his children from their room while they spend their lives in jail. The loss is irreparable for Fernando’s friend, and they find comfort in strange corners. The series concludes with Fernando’s friend talking about a black dog following him around everywhere, whom he ultimately named Rex and got a tattoo of on his wrist, which from backwards read “Fer”– a beloved nickname for Fernando. 

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