Uruguayan soccer player Nicolás Schiappacasse, who was arrested on January 26 carrying a firearm, faces preventive detention very depressed and with COVID-19, according to his defense attorney, Karen Pintos, on Monday.
“He is very depressed, very bad; so, once we can have physical contact with him, we are going to resort to having him have some type of containment with health professionals, ”said the lawyer in an interview with local radio Sport 890.
The striker, who was going to renew with Peñarol Uruguayan and who played between 2016 and 2018 in the lower categories of Atlético de Madrid, is serving 90 days in preventive detention for illegal possession of a firearm, plus other charges.
Pintos, who was recently hired by the player’s parents, acknowledged that he has only had contact with her, since in his first week in Only lawyers could enter the admission center and later, when it was transferred to the Florida prison, it was included in the COVID protocol due to the high number of inmates affected. Therefore, he remained “without access to family, friends, or a lawyer.”
Later, he himself became infected, so he is now isolated. “He is extremely depressed”, explained Pintos, who denied some facts commented after his arrest, such as what the player himself had declared.
Along the same lines, he added: “Nicolás has not yet declared even at Not in the Prosecutor’s Office. Nothing that went viral with audios is true… The networks have those things. In this case, which is very attractive, things that are not real have gone viral”.
Regarding the state of health of his client, he said that suffering from depression is always worrying, and that he is waiting to “receive medical care and be assessed by professionals”.
Schiappacasse was arrested on January 26 with a weapon of fire 9 millimeters when he went to witness a pre-season match between his team and the Nacional, in the city of Maldonado.
His lawyer at that time, Rafael García, explained in a press conference that the weapon had been reported stolen two years ago.
Schiappacase’s arrest occurred at a time of full discussion in Uruguay about violence in the world of sports due to various criminal acts related, to a greater or lesser extent, to the two great Uruguayan soccer clubs.