The Sixth Section of the Provincial Court has continued this Tuesday in Lanzarote with the trial against the seven defendants accused of robbing and beating the carpenter from San Bartolomé, José Antonio Perera, who died two months later in 2016.
At the beginning of the second day of the oral hearing, five of the seven defendants declared before the Court the need to repeat the statement they had given just a day before, in which they had denied all the facts. Three of them acknowledged their involvement in the assault on the house.
Narciso Gutiérrez Acosta (alias El Peón), Nestor David Padilla (alias El Calvo), José Miguel Betancort (alias El Gordo), Juan Antonio Delgado and Enrique González repeated that they felt “pressured in the jail” before the celebration of the first session of the trial and now want to “tell the truth.”
For his part, Ángelo Delgado (alias El Loco) maintained the statement of the previous day, when he denied his relationship with the facts. The lawyer of Ángelo, shared with his father Juan Antonio Delgado, resigned to continue defending Juan Antonio and his legal advice was assumed by the lawyer of another of the defendants to avoid the suspension of the trial.
New testimonies
During the new statement, Narciso Gutiérrez (alias El Peón) confessed before the Provincial Court that he was part of the first group that entered the house, together with the also accused José Miguel Betancort (alias El Gordo) and Sandra Viviana Ramírez. He also confessed that they were dressed as agents of the Civil Guard to pretend that they were investigating a crime of money laundering and thus be able to enter the house.
The owners of the house were tied up and their faces covered with cushion covers, according to the confessed authors.
Gutiérrez assured that he does not remember who tied up the owner, but acknowledges that he did give “some blow” to the victim that January 18. Along with him, José Miguel Betancort (El Gordo) also confessed to having assaulted the house with the aim of carrying out a robbery.
In his new testimony, Betancort denied having hit the deceased and insisted that he “did not see a blow” towards the victim. Despite this, the Prosecutor's Office highlighted that Perera suffered damage to the head, as well as other parts of the body, caused by a beating. Two months later, a thrombus ended his life.
Minutes after the rest of the gang, the also accused Néstor David Padilla (El Calvo) assaulted the house of José Antonio Perera, during his intervention he incriminated the also accused Ángelo Delgado (El Loco), whom he accuses of having entered at that moment with him.
After that, Padilla places next to him, the accused Sandra Viviana Ramírez, who continued defending this Tuesday that she did not enter the house that day. “I stayed at all times with the lady. She was tied up, with a cushion cover on her head,” Padilla revealed. In that time, he adds that the rest of the gang was with the owner José Antonio Perera, in a separate room.
The police action, which was ratified this Tuesday before the Court, also placed inside the house of Perera, in La Florida, the accused Antonio Enrique González García (alias El Ciego), who during his new testimony denied again his involvement in the assault on the house, but assured that he got a “crowbar”, a type of lever, that Narciso had asked him to use in the robbery. His alleged companions in the robbery assure that he drove the family's stolen car that they used in the escape.
Regarding the possible involvement of Sandra Viviana, during the statement of one of the agents of the Organic Unit of the Judicial Police of the Civil Guard who participated in the investigation, it was insisted that the woman who entered the house was “a blonde woman who could not be identified” and denies that it could be Sandra Viviana Ramírez "due to her physical characteristics", since she is dark-skinned and dark-haired and does not coincide with the age indicated by the witnesses nor with the height. “In my opinion, Sandra was not the one inside the house, with respect to what the victims describe,” an agent highlighted.
During the witness's statement, he added that this gang “functions as a criminal organization" and that they entered the house "with the aim of finding a safe, which they thought the owners had.” During the robbery they took “some jewels and a vehicle” owned by the victim.
In addition, another of the agents who intervened in the operation revealed that he is "convinced that we have saved someone's life" and that the detainees "were going to carry out another hit."
Victim's situation
After the defendants left the house, the first to arrive were a couple of agents from the Local Police of San Bartolomé. "José Antonio was lying on the ground, face up, with his pants down to his knees, his feet tied and his underwear down," said one of the agents during his intervention, thus exposing the torture methods that had been used against him.
His wife had covered him with "blankets" or "towels" that covered all the blood. In addition, the police couple highlighted that the area that bled the most was the head. In addition, the woman, who was the one who alerted the agents, conveyed her fear that something would happen to her young daughter, who was at school at that time. For this reason, they moved a patrol of the Local Police to the educational center.
After that, the health services arrived, agents of the Civil Guard of San Bartolomé and agents of the Organic Unit of the Judicial Police who traveled from Gran Canaria after being informed of "the seriousness" of what happened.
Days after the events, with the victim still in the hospital, they took a statement from José Antonio Perera, who assured that among the methods used against him, he was given electric shocks. Thus, the agents indicated that days prior to the robbery, they had watched the house.