A 17-year-old boy committed suicide on December 1, 2016 in the Spanish city of Valencia after being harassed with more than a hundred messages sent in just seven hours by a man he met on the Internet, which continued to reach him even after dead.
A jury deliberates from this Wednesday whether the person who sent them should be convicted of murder, according to the newspaper El País.
"I'm going to teach you not to waste time";
"I'm going to teach you not to bother";
"I'm coming for you";
"I'm going to ruin your parents because of you" are some of the messages that Vicente Paradís, 62, sent to the victim, who has been identified only as Iván.
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The young man, overwhelmed, apologized for having bothered him and begged him not to retaliate against him or his parents.
"Please don't," "I'll do whatever you want," he told her.
But the man continued without lowering his tone, according to the Prosecutor's Office during the seven days of trial.
In just three hours he sent her up to 119 messages.
Overwhelmed, Ivan warned her 11 times that he would take his own life.
But the harassment continued: “If you commit suicide, you will leave the
brown
[problem] to your parents,” Paradís replied, “you are going to cry tears of blood in front of the judges and your parents.”
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At 6:40 in the afternoon Iván threw himself from the roof of the building where he lived with his parents and brother.
In his pockets he carried his phone.
Even afterward, he continued to receive bullying messages, including a false complaint from the man.
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Paradís' lawyer requested acquittal for her client, alleging flaws in the investigation because the teenager's cell phone was not analyzed until eight months after his death and, according to what she said, could have been manipulated.
The police did not discover the harassment to which the young man had been subjected until that moment.
The prosecutor highlighted in the final arguments that "the accused created the risk, he was warned of the consequence that his attitude could have and he accepted the possibility of the result of death."
"The minor is not among us because of the accused," he concluded.