A popular jury unanimously declared MQS, accused of the fatal assault in Marmolejo (Jaén), in June 2021, of the Huelva photojournalist Alicia Rodríguez, guilty of murder aggravated by kinship. They were both a couple at the time of the events. After the sentence, the punishment remains to be known. The convicted person faces prison sentences of between two and 28 years, in a range that goes from requests for manslaughter to aggravated murder. A friend of Rodríguez remembers the murdered woman in an article published this Tuesday by EL PÁIS, He killed my friend.
In the trial, in addition to the Prosecutor’s Office and the private prosecutor’s office, the Municipality of Huelva – which asked for 25 years of imprisonment for a crime of murder with a degree of kinship – and the Council of Andalusia, which asked for 15 years considering it a crime of voluntary murder, were present as popular accusations. In the final conclusions the Board added the aggravating circumstance of kinship.
In this way, the popular jury found that the facts constituted murder, as well as finding that there was an aggravating circumstance of kinship, which was one of the issues resolved in this trial. The defense asked for the lowest possible sentence to be imposed, while the prosecutor asked for 20 years and one day in prison.
According to what was stated in the testimonies of the Guardia Civil officers who were the first to arrive on the scene, the accused was “nervous and upset”, one of them even underlined that he also had “an aggressive attitude”. Likewise, they indicated that the night was “dark” and that the victim’s body was “in the center of the car”, with the head “towards the front, with the right hand forward and the left hand towards the left of the car”, as well as that the body was “completely bent over and with the right leg raised, bent in a V towards the front”.
On the other hand, they explained that upon arrival they discovered that she “had no pulse” and that they had to remove her from under the car, lifting her with a jack, since “she was trapped”, while they stated that the terrain was “not uneven”, but “relatively flat”.
For his part, the officer of the Traffic subsector of the Civil Guard of Jaén who carried out the visual inspection of the area and the first accident report the day after the fatal accident indicated that the investigation conducted in the area shows that “there must have been an intention to press the accelerator” to “overtake the object” of the accident.
In this regard, the officer noted that there were traces of “friction” due to the acceleration of the car – Opel Insignia – and that these traces were in a “straight line” and “forward”, as well as that there had been no “attempt to avoid the obstacle to avoid it” and that “he had to accelerate when he had it under him”. For this reason, he indicated that “there had to be an intention to press the accelerator”, since “if I had not pressed hard, the car would not have passed the obstacle”, so the movement “was intentional”.
Likewise, the officer stressed that, “if the car had swerved instead of moving forward, the injuries would have been minor.” Likewise, when questioned by the private prosecutor’s office, both this officer and two others stated that, due to the distance of the vehicle’s chassis from the ground, “a person could not fit” under it.
The same road agent specified that an investigation was carried out at the site of the accident to verify whether there were irregularities in the ground and the car could have moved on its own – since the accused initially stated that he had gone out to urinate and when he returned he found it underneath -, then he placed a van “in neutral” and verified that “if someone had gotten in front, with the inclination that was there, the vehicle could have stopped”. Therefore, he reiterated that if the car continues to advance “they have to accelerate to pass the object”.
So far this year, 1,333 women were killed by their partners or ex-partners. Since the start of official statistics in 2003, there are 38 women.
The 016 telephone line assists victims of sexist violence, their families and those around them 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 53 different languages. The number is not recorded on the phone bill, but the call must be canceled from the device. You can also contact via email 016-online@igualdad.gob.es and via WhatsApp on 600 000 016. Minors can contact the ANAR Foundation telephone number 900 20 20 10. In case of emergency it is possible to call 112 or the telephone numbers of the State Police (091) and the Civil Guard (062). And if you can’t call you can use the ALERTCOPS application, from which an alert signal is sent to the Police with geolocation.
