The cook accused of murdering his boss in Puerto del Carmen, Lanzarote, in August 2019, was about to be decapitated if three off-duty civil guards who witnessed the scene had not intervened, one of whom stated this Tuesday to the Jury that, if the defendant had given him "one more cut, he would have been left with the head in his hand."
In the second session of the trial held in the Las Palmas Court against Federico Antonio E.M., 62 years old, the three agents who stopped the defendant and told him to throw the knife on the ground testified, and two of them indicated that if they had not stopped him, he would have continued stabbing the victim. "This is what stuck with me" in my mind, one of them stressed.
The guards explained that they were going to a meal when they saw a man (the victim) passing by with his hand on his neck and another man following him with hurried steps (the accused) through an alley, and that the first one tripped over a bike and fell to the ground on his knees. The one behind took advantage of that moment to take out the knife he was hiding in his forearm and cut his neck.
Then, according to what they indicated, the three shouted in unison: "Stop, Civil Guard, drop the knife" and the detainee, after hesitating, threw it on the ground "thank God", one of them pointed out.
They explained that they tried to stop the victim's bleeding with towels and rags, but "there was no way to stop it" and that the restaurant owner died in the arms of one of the agents.
Two other witnesses
Another witness, a cleaning employee of the apartments located in the alley, heard the restaurant owner asking for help, who, as she remembered, had his hands on his neck.
She related that she asked the accused to drop the knife when she saw him approaching the victim, although she said that she did not get to see how he cut his neck because "everything was very fast", and that she immediately threw towels to cover the wound.
Another employee of a bicycle shop located next to the restaurant, explained to the court that she heard high-pitched screams and that Rachid, whom she knew because he used to bring them coffee, approached the door of the premises with a "panic" face and asked her to call the Police, and that she did not realize that he was injured.
After calling the Police, from the glass of the premises, the witness indicated that she never saw Rachid alive again, whom she described as a kind person and "enthusiastic about his business."
His widow also testified in this session: "He cannot say that he is crazy"
His widow, who when the events occurred, on August 1, was with her three children in Morocco, stated that the accused "cannot say that he is crazy", and that both her husband and she behaved well with him, so she does not understand what happened.
Her biggest concern is how to explain to her three children, who were six, five, and one year and nine months old at that time, that their father was killed.
In this session, the images captured by the security cameras inside the restaurant were also reproduced, when the accused approached his boss from behind and gave him the first cut on the neck, and fled, as well as the fall suffered by the defendant; and those of the alley, where he attacked him for the second time, about 25 or 30 meters from the premises.
The civil guard who was in charge of recovering the images pointed out to the Jury that it can be deduced from them that the first intention of the accused was to inflict the stab wound from the restaurant from behind, but then he changed to the neck.
Likewise, in this session, a video taken by the Civil Guard of the entire crime scene was shown, in which the trail of blood that the victim was leaving until he reached the alley and how at one point he tried to change the route can be seen, something that the secretary of the instruction has not been able to explain.
The trial will continue this Tuesday with the declaration of the forensic experts, a test that will be fundamental for the Jury, since it will determine the mental state of the accused, who claims to suffer from mental problems and whose defense alleges incomplete exemption for this reason, while the Prosecutor's Office and the private prosecution appreciate it as a mitigating factor of anomaly or psychic alteration.
