A pregnant cop was accidentally shot by her own colleague’s gun, and her family says they went eight hours without answers

An Argentina police officer, six months into her pregnancy, is recovering after her partner’s gun accidentally discharged inside their precinct and struck her, according to the New York Post. Mariana Jofré was working an administrative shift alongside Cristian Albarracín, her partner, early on Sept. 14 at Precinct 34 in La Bebida. The town sits in San Juan’s western Rivadavia department.

His gun went off while he was handling it, and the bullet hit Jofré in the back, local prosecutors said. Fiscal Coordinador Roberto Ginsberg is overseeing the case, local outlets reported. Paramedics treated her at the scene before rushing her to Hospital Rawson in critical condition.

A medical report described the shot as close-range, fracturing the transverse process of her L4 vertebra, an injury doctors estimated would take about 35 days to heal. That type of fracture is typically considered stable and low-risk to the spinal cord on its own, and her later surgery targeted the bullet itself rather than the bone.

Surgery followed days after the shooting

The cop, a mother of an 8-year-old girl with three years on the force, was later moved to a different medical facility. On Sept. 17, surgeons operated to extract the bullet from her back. According to local reports, Jofré left the hospital the following day and her pregnancy was never in jeopardy. Neither the baby’s sex nor a due date has been made public.

Carla Barman, Jofré’s cousin, said the family got no updates from authorities for more than eight hours after the shooting. “The media were already saying she was stable, even though we knew nothing,” Barman told Telesol Diario. “Some outlets even reported that he had passed away. Yet, as a family, no one came out to give us an answer.”

During questioning, Albarracín told prosecutors that he and a fellow officer had been chasing a crime suspect. He said he’d handed that officer his weapon for the chase, and didn’t realize the weapon still had a round chambered when it came back to him once they returned to the station. From early on, investigators have treated the shooting as accidental rather than intentional. Albarracín was initially held at a separate precinct before he was formally charged.

He was let go the same day as Jofré’s surgery, and prosecutors formally charged him under Article 94 and Article 249 of Argentina’s penal code. Article 94 addresses bodily harm caused by negligence, while Article 249 covers a public official who fails to carry out an official act. Prosecutors filed the two charges in ideal concurrence, meaning that under Article 54, only the harsher penalty applies rather than the sentences stacking.

Article 94 alone carries up to three years in prison and up to four years of professional disqualification. A judge set an eight-month deadline for prosecutors to wrap up the investigation, and Albarracín must check in monthly at the 15th Precinct. He also needs a judge’s sign-off before leaving Argentina and cannot interfere with evidence gathering or the broader investigation.

What role, if any, Albarracín currently holds with the department has not been disclosed.