On April 26, 2021, three boys and two girls between the ages of 14 and 19 were playing cards in a park in the San Fermín neighborhood in Madrid, when a hail of machetes put an end to the game.
The worst affected was a 14-year-old boy who was left for dead by his friends and who received blows with knives on the head, face, back and ended up with his hand hanging.
“A savagery,” police sources explicitly summarize.
It is a fall, in the jargon of youth gangs, a premeditated group attack to mark territory or attack supposed rivals.
It was the turn of those five friends, whom the police do not consider members of any gang.
Until next week, the case is being judged in the Provincial Court of Madrid.
In the dock sits JJR, the only adult defendant arrested for these events, an alleged member of the Dominican Don't Play (DDP) and whom the victims identified by a tattoo of a rose on the inside of his hand.
That day, everything happens in a matter of a few minutes.
Around nine thirty at night, the attacked group plays calmly on a bench on San Ruperto Street.
Sitting nearby, there are two other guys drinking some cans of beer.
At the same time, a young woman is walking through the park with her dog.
She passes a group of “more than 10” people dressed in black and with hoods, some walking and others on bicycles.
The girl follows her path.
A few minutes later, those hooded men fall with the greatest possible violence on the friends who are playing cards.
“I heard D3, and when I was turning I was hit in the back by a machete,” says one of the victims, 19 years old.
That is the war cry of the DDP gang, the one they use in their attacks against their enemies the Trinitarios, the one they repeat in their videos, the one they paint on the floors of the fields and parks that they consider their territory.
That first victim suffers two stab wounds in the chest and abdomen, another in the cheek, a fracture in the ear canal and another in the shoulder.
Another of the boys, 17 years old at the time, manages to escape and take refuge in a nearby bar after receiving a very strong blow when he puts his arm in front of him to protect one of the girls, 18 years old, but his injuries are mild.
The one who gets the worst part is one they call “the little one,” because he is 14 years old.
When he starts to run, he falls to the ground and there they hit him twice in the head with machetes, leaving two wounds 25 and 10 centimeters long and five centimeters deep.
They stab him again in the face, breaking several of his teeth, plunge two knives into his abdomen, pierce his lung, and almost cut off his hand.
“I'm not going to lie to you, I saw him fatal, with a head injury, I thought he had died.
"They were going to kill us," the friend who was slightly injured this Monday told the prosecutor.
This Monday, all the victims and witnesses reconstructed the events of that night behind a screen or by video call, some of them assisted by the victim care office, an accompaniment and support service offered by the public administration for cases of special vulnerability. .
“I was killing time with the cards until it was time to go home, suddenly I turned around and before I realized it, they had already hit me with a machete or a knife.
I tried to run away, but I fell to the ground and they continued hitting me, I asked them to stop,” said “the little one,” the most affected, who has been left with a 97% recognized disability and who needed two years of medical treatments and interventions.
His hand was practically severed from the body, although the doctors later managed to reconstruct it. He has neurological damage and also difficulty walking, in addition to the obvious scars.
“Do you have problems leading a normal life?” the prosecutor asked him in the room.
“You mean do I need help eating and all that?
Yes, I need it,” answered the boy, who is now 17 years old.
Another of the victims went to live with her family outside of Madrid after the attack.
The only adult accused, who is now 24 years old, faces a 28-year prison sentence for two attempted murders.
The medical reports indicate that if the two most serious young people had not received immediate medical attention, they would have died in that square.
The defense of the accused asks for free acquittal by ensuring that he was not the author of the machetes.
The defendant maintains that he was not even there, but that he was near him, but hanging out with his girlfriend.
During the search of his home, the police also found several knives, a blank pistol and necklaces that the agents interpret as a symbol of power in the gangs.
“All of that is to record my video clips,” he says.
"And the notebooks?" the prosecutor asked.
-Also, lyrics of my songs- he justified.
Members of youth gangs receive a type of written commandments and teachings when they are considered full members.
Police believe that is what he had in his home and not song lyrics.
Investigators from the Information Brigade of the National Police consider that the origin of this attack is another previous attack.
In the same area and just a few hours before, another member of the Dominican Do n't Play, known to the accused, was attacked when he was walking with his girlfriend.
The agents believe that JJR responded with this ferocity to the attack on his partner.
Police investigations placed the accused in the area at the time of the attack thanks to the positioning of his mobile phone and found dozens of files, contacts and conversations related to the DDP on his terminal.
He had also been identified weeks before in a tribute to a gang member murdered in Carabanchel in 2018. The victims could also see a tattoo of a rose on the hand that was wielding one of the machetes, the same one that the one who now sits in front of has. to the judge.
Five other alleged members of the DDP were also arrested for these events, but they are minors and are following a separate judicial procedure.
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