The driver arrested and imprisoned for ploughing his car into five cyclists in Murcia has a history of violent crime, having previously been convicted of murdering his great-aunt with a hammer in 2013. The horrific crime took place in Jacarilla, a municipality in the Vega Baja region.
The man went to the home of his relative, a 78-year-old woman at the time, accompanied by his romantic partner. Their sole motive was to demand money from the septuagenarian to fund his cocaine addiction.
Inside the property was the victim’s husband, who later testified in court about how the assailant beat the woman with a hammer and attacked him as well. The offender grabbed him by the neck in an attempt to asphyxiate him while urging his girlfriend to strike the man over the head with the hammer.
Tricking the victim to gain entry
During the trial in June 2014, the defendant confessed that he rang the doorbell and, when his great-aunt looked out of the window, lied to her by claiming that her own grandfather had died to trick her into opening the door. According to the accused, once they entered the house, he went straight to the bedroom where the victim’s husband was resting in order to immobilise him.
He recounted that after leaving the room, he saw his girlfriend strike his great-aunt twice from behind with a hammer, leaving the elderly woman lying on the floor. Meanwhile, he held the husband by the neck and urged his girlfriend to use the hammer to intimidate him, though the octogenarian raised a hand and blocked the blow. The defendant stated that the assault stopped when the homeowner told them that he had five million pesetas hidden in the pigeon loft and promised to hand the money over.
Drug addiction and previous convictions
The girlfriend testified that it was the male defendant who took the woman’s life, bludgeoning her brutally. Even back then, the man admitted to a severe cocaine dependency, an addiction that had previously driven him to demand money from his great-aunt and even hospitalised him shortly before the January murder following a heavy bout of drugs and alcohol.
Cocaine was the exact substance he tested positive for when subjected to drug and alcohol screenings immediately after the recent cycling accident. For the murder of his great-aunt, the individual was sentenced to 17 years in prison for murder, seven years, six months and one day for attempted murder regarding the victim’s husband, and three years for robbery with violence in an inhabited house.
He was serving his sentence at the Fontcalent facility and was on day release—a semi-liberty regime allowing inmates to serve time in a social insertion centre—when he committed this latest offence on Sunday.
