New Progressive Party Senator for Carolina Héctor Joaquín Sánchez attributed allegations about a supposed chat with the four Loíza students taken to a political event in Camuy to "maldad" (ill will), rejecting any inference of improper action by him. El Nuevo Día learned through sources that the mother of one student submitted the chat’s contents to the Department of Justice; she appeared there Wednesday with her son to testify, her lawyer Joel Osorio Chiclana confirmed, and the other parents were also summoned.
The investigation concerns the transport of eleventh graders from the Segunda Unidad Belén Blanco de Zequeira school in Loíza during school hours to the October 14 PNP event in Camuy ratifying the municipal committee chaired by Mayor Gabriel Hernández, attended by legislators including Sánchez and Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz. The lawyer said the mother authorized the trip believing it was a school tour, that a private vehicle allegedly belonging to the senator picked them up, and that Sánchez returned them home after midnight.
Sánchez said parents’ verbal authorization was given and blamed PPD adversaries in Loíza; Osorio Chiclana rejected political motives. Education provisionally removed counselor Mariel Lacén and director Militza Córdova; Justice’s Public Integrity Division evaluates a referral on Sánchez; the Family Department opened an inquiry; Senate President Rivera Schatz stripped Sánchez of the Transportation committee chairmanship and ordered an ethics proceeding, which Ethics Committee Chair Juan Oscar Morales would take up. Governor Jenniffer González called the allegations "quite serious".