The cook accused of murdering his boss declares that he does not remember it because he lived it "like a movie"

The cook accused of murdering his boss with two stab wounds to the neck on August 1, 2019, in Lanzarote, stated this Monday before a Jury of the Las Palmas Court that he feels very sorry and that what he did weighs on his conscience, but that he does not remember what happened because he experienced it "like a movie" that was "horrifying" him.

In the first session of the trial, the defendant, Federico Antonio E.M., 62 years old, told the court that he suffers from mental problems, including dissociative amnesia, and that in those days he was on the verge of suicide, quite "out of control" and had been without his medication for three months, but he stressed that he "never planned Rachid's death", his boss, nor did he wait for him to be turned away to attack him as the accusations claim.

As he explained, the events occurred in the restaurant located in Puerto del Carmen shortly after arriving, at 1:50 p.m., as every day, although it caught his attention to see the owner so early and cleaning the place, that he got angry and insulted him calling him "faggot", because he stepped on the wet floor. Then, he went to the kitchen, leaned on a counter and grabbed the knife.

The defendant assures that from there he does not remember what happened, because he felt that he was watching a movie that took place in the jungle and among reeds, in which "someone emerges from the water and attacks from behind a man who was turned away with a machine gun".

In the scene that he says he experienced in his mind, that man "grabs the other by the head with one hand and cuts his neck with a knife so he doesn't make noise." And Federico Antonio E.M. told the Jury that that man, the one with the knife, had to be him.

At the moment when he gave his boss the first stab, he says he felt an "immense pain in his side" from the fall he had suffered in the restaurant when he slipped on the wet floor.

Of the second cut in the neck that he gave to the owner of the place, already injured and in an alley, where he was trying to escape, he indicated that he probably did it because he saw a person who was suffering and felt that he had to end that suffering, because he explained that he grew up in the countryside and that was what was done with animals.

Of his boss's escape from the restaurant and how he got to the alley, where he slit his throat again, he pointed out that he only remembers "colors flying and a voice telling him to throw the knife and sit on the stairs".

The defendant explained that he was in "an extreme moment of depression and nerves". He had been hired nine months ago for half a day but worked eleven hours a day, with the promise of extending his contract and improving his working conditions, but nothing of what they promised him was fulfilled.

The relationship with his boss was not good and worsened after an argument because the products for cooking came from the food bank, but despite this he assured that his intention was never to kill him and that he will try to pay the widow and her children the compensation of 100,000 euros that is claimed.

The accused faces a sentence of 19 and a half years in prison, according to the sentence proposed by prosecutor Javier Jiménez, who considers that the mitigating circumstance of anomaly or mental alteration exists, which is also recognized by the private prosecution, although this raises the sentence to 24 and a half years because it understands that there was cruelty.

The defense, however, qualifies the facts as homicide with the aggravating circumstance of superiority and in which the mitigating circumstance of undue delays concurs, in addition to an incomplete exemption due to his client's mental illness, for which he initially demands a sentence of five years in prison.

Likewise, the lawyer has requested the nullity of the proceedings, although not the suspension of the trial, alleging that her client had not been able to testify previously, a question that has been rejected by the president of the court, Pedro Herrera, as untimely and unfounded, and that the prosecutor has considered as a maneuver to "muddy" the oral hearing, which has also been supported by the private prosecution.

The court-appointed lawyer José Luis Sáez represents the widow and her three minor children.

The trial will continue this Tuesday with the testimony of the witnesses, the president of the court has indicated.