Diego Maradona’s eldest daughter Dalma said she couldn’t recognize her father in the days leading up to the star’s death.

“He wouldn’t laugh, he was lost. We’d do a video call and he wouldn’t understand who was on the other side,” she testified in the trial over her father’s death. She accused the defendants of asking Maradona to film himself lying about his state.

Dalma also took aim at Maradona’s chief medical adviser, Leopoldo Luque, arguing that she and her family “trusted he’d do what was best” for the former star, and that he insisted that “home care was the only choice.”

She criticized the state of the house where the star lived his final days, calling it a “disgusting” place with a “stench of urine” and covered windows that prevented the entrance of sunlight. Dalma went on to minimize the role she and her younger sister Giannina had in their father’s care. 

“We were promised home hospitalization, with medical equipment, doctors on call, and an ambulance outside. That didn’t happen,” she said.

‘I told him I was going to throw him out of the window’

Victor Stinfale was the other key witness on Tuesday. The lawyer, with well established links in the world of football, introduced himself as a “personal friend” of Maradona who worked with him in different stages over the past 25 years.

He said he last saw the star a week before his final birthday, on October 30, 2020.

“He was depressed, he talked of [former partner] Rocío Oliva and took [anti-anxiety medication] Alplax like it was candy,” said Stinfale.

The lawyer criticized Maradona’s medical setup, arguing that it wasn’t clear who called the shots. “If they had put Verónica Ojeda to take care of him, Diego wouldn’t have died,” he said.

Stinfale also took aim at Luque, whom he said had “an affection for Maradona that was incompatible with medical practice.” 

“Luque told me Maradona was going to surgery and I told him ‘Mate, I’m going to throw you out of a window, you’re not operating on Maradona,’” he recalled, adding that he insisted that they had to look for the best available brain surgeon.

He remembered Maradona’s daughters asking him to attend the meeting after the surgery in which home care was decided. Stinfale said that everyone was in agreement at the time, but insisted that the end result was vastly different from what had been laid out in the original plan.