The Court of Alicante has sentenced a pool cleaner from Jávea to a permanent, reviewable prison sentence who killed the owner of a house where he worked with nine stab wounds, who caught him stealing from a room in the house.
Héctor James TG, a Colombian immigrant who has been in Spain for 25 years, sneaked into the chalet with the keys he had for his work, but was surprised by the owner, Francisco D., a 96-year-old man with reduced mobility. and poor vision, whom he stabbed without saying a word.
The loot from this crime was meager: a laptop valued at 220 euros.
The events occurred on December 21, 2021, when the now convicted man, who had the keys to the gate of the house, entered the house, knowing that Francisco was inside;
but he was confident that the victim's vision and mobility problems would prevent him from discovering it.
But the old man got up and caught the pool cleaner, who was wearing gloves and a knife, rummaging through a room.
According to what investigators said during the trial, the now convicted man supposedly believed that there was cash in the house, especially because of the proximity of the Christmas holidays, but he did not find it and took only the laptop.
The thief, who had been working in cleaning and maintaining the house's pool for five years, stabbed him nine times, two of them fatally, "without giving him any possibility of defense due to the age difference and vision problems and mobility of the victim”, according to a note provided by the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community.
The man has been convicted after a popular jury returned a guilty verdict on February 9.
During the oral hearing, the members of this jury learned about the changes in the version that the accused had and also a key piece of evidence: the civil guards of the Alicante Command who investigated the events found a genetic trace of the accused in the nails of the murdered elderly man.
They were also able to learn that the security camera recordings placed James in the area of the crime on the day of the events, despite the fact that he denied it when testifying before the Civil Guard.
The Court also imposes a five-year prison sentence on the accused, detained since April 2022, for the crime of robbery with violence in an inhabited house and use of weapons.
The convicted person must compensate each of the three children of the deceased with 50,000 euros.
The sentence is not final and can be appealed to the Civil and Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community.