Man Who Confessed to Killing Partner in Sant Martí Dies in Prison
A man held since July for stabbing his partner in Sant Martí took his own life in prison. The case had followed a court's refusal to remove the mother from their children.
A man who walked into a police station in Barcelona at the end of July and confessed to killing his partner has taken his own life in prison, prison sources confirmed to the Catalan news agency ACN. The crime news site El Caso was first to report the death.
Prison staff found him dead in his cell during the Thursday morning headcount, according to ACN. He had been in pretrial detention, known in Spain as presó provisional, since his arrest in late July.
A killing in Sant Martí, then a confession
The killing took place in the Sant Martí district in late July. The man went to a station of the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalonia’s police) a few hours later and admitted to the crime, according to reports by Ara and the local broadcaster betevé.
He stabbed the woman in the flat where she lived. The couple’s two children were present at the time, both outlets reported.
A court had turned down a request to protect the children
Details that came out after the crime drew attention to an earlier court case. Weeks before the killing, the man had filed a complaint accusing the woman of mistreating their children. To protect the children, the Fiscalia (the public prosecutor’s office) asked the court to keep the mother away from them.
The court handling the case denied that request. Two weeks after the refusal, the man killed the woman.
After the killing, the prosecutor’s office said the proceedings opened in early July had looked only at the man’s complaint against the woman. According to betevé, the office said that case covered alleged violence by the mother against the two children. Because of that narrow focus, prosecutors said, other forms of violence within the couple were not investigated at the time, and their work was aimed only at protecting the children.
What it means for the case
The man’s death in custody means there will be no trial in which he answers for the killing of his partner. The questions raised over the summer remain open: how the earlier complaint about the children was handled, and why the court refused the prosecutor’s request to separate the mother from them.
The justice system had already been dealing with this family weeks before the killing. Prosecutors have said the earlier proceedings focused on the children’s safety and did not examine the relationship between the two adults.
Prison authorities have not released further details about the circumstances of the death beyond confirming it to ACN.
Who was involved
The Mossos d’Esquadra took the man into custody after his confession. The Fiscalia had sought protective measures for the children in the earlier case, and a court rejected them. Prison sources confirmed the death to ACN. The names of the man and the woman were not disclosed.
