The Sixth Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas has sentenced four of the seven defendants for robbing and beating the carpenter from San Bartolomé José Antonio Perera in 2016, who ended up dying after two months in the hospital, for murder. While it has sentenced the seven involved for belonging to a criminal organization, robbery and illegal detention.
The Court has imposed sentences of between four years and ten months and 21 years in prison for those convicted in the assault on the house in La Florida in January 2016.
The highest penalty has been for Ángelo Delgado (alias El Loco), whom the Chamber has sentenced to eleven years in prison as responsible for murder as the perpetrator and the only one who did not acknowledge his involvement during the trial. José Miguel Betancort (El Gordo) has also been sentenced as the perpetrator of the murder, to seven years in prison, with the aggravating circumstance of using a disguise of a Civil Guard agent; Néstor David Padilla (alias El Calvo) and Narciso Manuel Gutiérrez (alias El Peón) to five years in prison.
In the conviction of Néstor David Padilla (alias El Calvo), José Miguel Betancort (El Gordo) and Narciso Manuel Gutiérrez (alias El Peón), the Provincial Court applied the mitigating factors of undue delays in the case and acknowledgment of the facts.
Meanwhile, it acquitted the other three involved, Juan Antonio Delgado (El Viejo), Antonio Enrique González García (alias El Ciego), and Sandra Viviana Ramírez of this crime. While the seven have been sentenced to three more years in prison for belonging to a criminal organization.
The Chamber has also sentenced four of the accused as perpetrators of the crime of robbery and illegal detention for detaining the victim by force in his house. Firstly, Ángelo Delgado (alias El Loco) will have to serve seven years in prison for this other crime; while José Miguel Betancort (El Gordo) has been sentenced to another five years, with the aggravating circumstance of being disguised as an agent; Néstor David Padilla (alias El Calvo) to five years, with the aggravating circumstance of being a repeat offender and the mitigating circumstances of having acknowledged the facts; while Narciso Manuel Gutiérrez (alias El Peón) has been sentenced to four years in prison, with the mitigating circumstance of acknowledging the facts. All of them have benefited from the mitigating circumstance of undue delays also in these two crimes.
Meanwhile, the other three have been convicted as accomplices to the crimes of robbery and illegal detention. Specifically, the Court has sentenced Antonio Enrique González García (alias El Ciego), to four years in prison, with the aggravating circumstance of recidivism: Juan Antonio Delgado (to three years; and Sandra Viviana Ramírez, the only woman involved, to one and a half years for having confessed to the facts and having offered "a more intense collaboration" in the case.
To these crimes, the Chamber has added a conviction for possession of prohibited weapons to Néstor David Padilla (alias El Calvo), sentenced to six months in prison and to Sandra Viviana Ramírez, sentenced to four for this crime.
Thus, the seven defendants have been acquitted of the crime of theft of use.
In addition, the four convicted of the murder of this resident of San Bartolomé must jointly and severally compensate four family members of the victim with 120,000 euros as civil liability. While the accused of the crime of robbery with violence in an inhabited house and illegal detention, the seven will have to return the value of the jewelry stolen in the assault.
The Public Prosecutor's Office and the private prosecution, promoted by the family of José Antonio Perera, accused the seven investigated of breaking into his home in San Bartolomé, one of them dressed as an agent of the Civil Guard, gagging its owners and beating Perera, which cost him his life after two months in the hospital. Of them, six have a history of crime, some are even convicted of the murder of Juan Carlos Tejera.
The day of the assault
The conviction of the Provincial Court has highlighted that Néstor David Padilla (alias El Calvo), Ángelo Delgado (alias El Loco), José Miguel Betancort (El Gordo) and Narciso Manuel Gutiérrez (alias El Peón) agreed to enter the house in La Florida, owned by the victim and his wife, on January 18, 2016 at 8:30 in the morning.
To do this, José Miguel Betancort (El Gordo) disguised himself as an agent of the Civil Guard, with a goatee and a fake mustache and a reflective vest. The four entered the house pretending that it was a police search. Once inside, they tied up the victim and his wife and began to ask them where the safe was and to give them all the valuables that were inside.
While asking for the money, the convicts beat the victim all over the body, applied electric shocks, caused a severe traumatic brain injury, with fracture and sinking of the head, fractured the eye sockets, several ribs, vertebrae and lumbar. In addition, other aggressions. Finally, the beating left the victim at risk of death until he died in the hospital two months later from an acute pulmonary thromboembolism.
On the day of the aggression, they stole several watches and jewels, and after that they fled using a vehicle of the victims. When fleeing the house, they left the owners tied up and lying on the floor.
The Provincial Court highlights that the accused "constituted a criminal organization, with an organizational structure on the island for the perpetration" of the crime and "facilitate the commission of the same".
