The early morning of July 3 was very long for the alleged assailants of Samuel Luiz. At 3.04, when they realized that a police car was approaching, the main defendants left the mortally wounded young man on a sidewalk of the A Coruña promenade and fled the place, first together and later separately. The concern about what had happened prompted them to meet twice that night, as reconstructed by the police through the cameras distributed throughout the city. At the first reunion, in the presence of witnesses other than the lynching, some of the defendants commented on the brutal beating with disdain and the man who beat Luiz up, calling him a "fag" repeated homophobic insults. When they learned that the 24-year-old boy had just died in the hospital, the six detainees improvised another meeting,but this time alone. Police suspect they destroyed evidence.
The progress of the judicial investigation that takes place in the court of instruction number 8 of A Coruña is pending to show what it was that the accused of the deadly assault did in that last encounter.
Those responsible for the investigations have already started to dump the mobile phones of the six alleged murderers, vital to demonstrate what incriminating messages they were able to erase.
This work is complicated by the thousands of files that the terminals contain and results have not yet been obtained.
More information
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A “human pack” kicked Samuel Luiz along more than 150 meters
The testimonies and recordings contained in the summary confirm that Samuel Luiz and his alleged assailants, a gang of friends between 16 and 25 years old, did not know each other at all and that the six minutes of lynching (between 2.58 and 3.04) began at a fatal misunderstanding with one of them, who had already shown previous signs of aggression, explain sources of the investigation. Diego MM, with no criminal record then and now in prison, was outside the El Andén pub with his girlfriend, Catherine SB, also under investigation for a cover-up, after having starred in a couple of clashes inside the premises. One occurred with his own partner and, the second, with other clients of the premises who turned out to be friends of Luiz.Investigators downplay this latest incident in which the deceased young man was not involved and rule out that it is related to the subsequent beating.
Diego MM saw the victim and her friend Lina pointing their cell phone at him and thought they were recording him. "You're recording me, fag" and "stop recording, let's see if I'm going to kill you, fag" are the insults and threats that, according to the witnesses, the defendant snapped at Luiz, facing him. Ignoring his explanations that he was making a video call, Diego MM began beating Luiz without his friend Lina being able to even try to avoid it. She stated, and this was confirmed by other witnesses, that the girlfriend of the first aggressor, whom the Prosecutor's Office accuses of murder like the rest of those investigated, pushed her away, telling her that "he did not paint anything there" and threw her to the ground.
The second aggressor who joined the beating was Alejandro FG, who calls himself
Yumba
. He was warned that his friend Diego was involved in a "fight" and left the pub with a hidden bottle, as recorded by the cameras of El Andén and reported by the newspaper
La Opinion A Coruña
, which has advanced the details of the summary. He went straight to Luiz and practiced a key called a mataleón, researchers say, squeezing his neck from behind and knocking him to the ground. Police believe Yumba used the container he took from the drinking place as a weapon because officers found broken glass with his DNA at the crime scene.
The Senegalese Ibrahima and Magatte passed by the place shortly after the attack began and noticed the blows that Luiz was receiving. Of the crowd that swarmed along the promenade of A Coruña that morning, they were the only people who launched themselves to defend the boy. "They were hitting a defenseless boy," Ibrahima told his acquaintances days after the tragedy. With these words he explained why he did not hesitate to interpose himself between the aggressors and the victim despite the fact that, in his case, he ran more risks than the rest of those present: he was an immigrant without papers and he was risking expulsion if the police arrived.
Ibrahima protected Luiz with his body until the end and received many kicks and punches.
Now the judge also charges the five accused of the crime with the crime of attempted murder of the young Senegalese.
At first he managed to get the boy out of the crowd who joined the two main defendants, Diego MM and Alejandro FG. He moved him as best he could from his attackers by crossing the street, with the help of his compatriot Magatte.
But nothing stopped the mob, which only dispersed when the Local Police car was about to appear, the first to arrive after calls from several witnesses.
More homophobic insults
The six defendants, four of them adults and two minors, left the crime scene first together and later separately. Kaio ASC took with him the victim's cell phone that was lying on the street. This conduct has earned him the imputation of a crime of misappropriation, together with that of murder that the judge also attributes to the other four who have been sent to prison or confined in a detention center. Throughout the instruction, or even already in the trial that will be held with a popular jury, it will be seen if they are also attributed an aggravation of hatred, or a crime of this type, the two options included in the Penal Code to punish homophobia.
At four thirty in the morning, an hour and a half after the beating, part of the attackers saw each other again in Europa Park, located two kilometers from the street where the emergency services tried unsuccessfully to revive Luiz. In addition to some of the defendants and their friends, that meeting was attended by a woman who, after the fatal beating, ran into Diego MM and his girlfriend, very upset, at a point in the city away from the Riazor promenade.
This witness, according to sources from the investigation, thought that the accused was mistreating the girl, so she followed them in case she needed help and even joined the meeting in the park. There he heard how the partner of the first aggressor said to him: "How did you leave it, one day they will give you the hosts." Diego MM, with blood stains on his clothes, answered Catherine SB: "Fucking fag, if he was a fucking fag." The same sources add that, after one of the attendees declared that she is a lesbian, Diego MM, affirmed: "I have a problem with gays."
This was not the last time the defendants met that fateful night. Kaio ASC, still with the victim's telephone number in his possession, went to the Complexo Hospitalario Universitario de A Coruña (CHUAC) because a friend was being treated there for an alcoholic coma. At the hospital, he learned that Luiz had died from the beating and notified the rest. It was then that the six defendants improvised another meeting, this time alone and without witnesses, the police stress. The agents are convinced that, realizing what was coming their way, they decided to delete incriminating messages from their mobiles.
Commissioner Pedro Agudo, who is leading the investigation, estimates that a dozen people were implicated in some way in the wild mob that chased Luiz for about 150 meters, although only six have been arrested. From Diego MM and Alejandro. FG DNA remains have also been found on the body and clothes of the victim. The police have not yet found incriminating evidence for the rest, but are awaiting the results of further analysis and the dumping of the defendants' mobile phones, so more arrests are not ruled out. Luiz's phone number taken by Kaio ASC has not been recovered. The defendant's defense, the only one who has agreed to testify before the judge, alleges that he threw him into a garbage container because he was afraid.