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Gastón Mercanzini was detained outside the Crónica TV news building in Buenos Aires
He visited the outlet hoping to get an interview to apologize for throwing a bottle at President Javier Milei on Sunday.
Mercanzini told police he “didn’t mean to hurt anyone” while handcuffed.
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A former government official who threw a glass bottle that nearly hit Argentine President Javier Milei while he was riding aboard a convertible on his way to the presidential palace has been arrested.
Gastón Mercanzini, 51, was handcuffed outside the Buenos Aires offices of the news program Crónica TV on Tuesday morning.
Mercanzini, who previously worked for the Ministry of Culture in the central province of Entre Ríos, regretted it when police detained him.
‘I apologize. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” he told police officers.
Gastón Mercanzini was arrested on Tuesday in front of the Crónica TV offices in Buenos Aires, just two days after he threw a bottle at Argentine President Javier Milei.
Milei waves to the crowd from a balcony of the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace in Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires authorities had been searching for Mercanzini after he was seen on surveillance video throwing the container that nearly hit Milei in the head before hitting Deputy Commissioner Guillermo Armentano on Sunday.
Armentano, who is part of the presidential custody unit of the Federal Police, was taken to the presidential palace, where he received medical treatment for a cut on his left ear.
Mercanzini appeared at the Crónica TV headquarters seeking to apologize for his behavior.
Sources from the Ministry of Security told the newspaper La Nación that police in the area were immediately alerted and went to the Crónica TV building, where they detained Mercanzini without incident.
‘After receiving a call from a Crónica journalist, we verified the information and sent, in an articulated manner, investigative detectives who joined the Municipal Police personnel to prevent the suspect from escaping,’ a source told La Nación. the Argentine Federal Police.
Mercanzini visited the headquarters of two media outlets to apologize for the bottle-throwing incident before being detained on Tuesday morning.
Milei was greeting his followers when he was nearly hit by a glass bottle that hit one of the agents assigned to his security team.
Before attempting to interview Crónica TV, Mercanzini had also approached the Radio 10 offices to apologize for the bottle-throwing incident.
Mercanzini was also arrested in July after breaking a car door with a metal pipe for attacking a police vehicle. In that case he was arrested on a charge of aggravated criminal mischief.
In August he was arrested for contempt of court and civil disobedience.
Police sources told La Nación that Mercanzini could face “charges of attempted involuntary manslaughter,” while others think he could be charged with attempted assault for throwing the bottle at President Milei.
Mercanzini had previously worked as Secretary of Culture in Concepción de Uruguay, a municipality in the central province of Entre Ríos, 320 kilometers north of Buenos Aires.
However, he was removed from office in 2013 after taking a leave of absence “due to personal problems,” the newspaper La Nación reported.
Mercanzini was a follower of the left-wing Peronist movement based on the ideas of former President Juan Perón, who ruled from 1946 to 1955, when he was overthrown, and again from 1973 until his death in 1974.