FILE PHOTO: The hearse carrying the casket of soccer legend Diego Maradona arrives at the cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina, November 26, 2020. REUTERS/Agustin Marcarian
November 29, 2020
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentine justice officials are investigating the death of soccer star Diego Maradona and ordered the search of properties of his personal doctor on Sunday, a local prosecutor’s office said.
Maradona died at age 60 of a heart attack on Wednesday. The search order was requested by prosecutors in the affluent Buenos Aires suburb San Isidro and signed by a local judge, according to a statement issued by the prosecutor’s office.
“Yesterday (Saturday) the investigation and substantiation of evidence continued with the taking of statements from people including direct relatives of the deceased,” it said.
“By virtue of the evidence that was collected, it was considered necessary to request searches at the home and office of doctor Leopoldo Luque,” the prosecutor’s office said in the statement.
The prosecutor’s office provided no information on what prompted the investigation.
Maradona’s lawyer, Matias Moria, on Thursday said he would ask for a full investigation of the circumstances of the soccer legend’s death, criticizing what he said was a slow response by emergency service.
“The ambulance took more than half an hour to arrive, which was a criminal idiocy,” Matias said on Thursday in a Twitter post.
(Reporting by Jorge Otaola and Ramiro Scandolo; Editing by Leslie Adler)