The death of national police officer Alberto Sánchez, 44, and Juan Carlos, 41, when they were travelling on the A-6 on Sunday from Ávila to Madrid in a shared car, has been “brutal” from start to finish, according to sources from the Unified Police Union (SUP), of which Alberto was a delegate. Because there is not only the terrible and absurd fact of dying because of a driver who was driving in the opposite direction, apparently by mistake, but also everything that came after. And what came after was that someone confused the bodies of both and “Alberto ended up in Galapagar (Madrid) and Juan Carlos, in Ávila”. The agent’s funeral “had to be held without the body present”, so the family is doubly devastated, does not want to talk about the matter and is considering taking legal action against those responsible for the error.
The head of the investigating court number 3 of Majadahonda (Madrid), Silvia García-Cuerva, in charge of investigating the accident, is also analyzing what happened with the identifications, since according to the union “the chain of custody was broken in the transfer of the bodies” and it is unknown who was to blame for the error, whether it was the Civil Guard, the funeral homes in charge of transporting the bodies, Parcesa and Funersierra, or the Forensic Anatomical Institute of Madrid, where the autopsy was performed.
The sinister It happened early Sunday morning, before 6.25at kilometre 20.700 of the A-6, in the municipality of Las Rozas (Madrid). A motorbike that was travelling on the same road before Alberto and Juan Carlos managed to partially avoid the vehicle travelling in the opposite direction, although its driver ended up rolling on the ground and seriously injured with fractures in both ankles and a femur, but the following car, driven by the agent, collided head-on.
All three died instantly, while the co-pilot of the car that was driving badly was seriously injured. The bodies were identified and taken by Parcesa to the Forensic Anatomy, where they were autopsied. Later, Funersierra took the sealed coffins to Ávila and Galapagar. Given the very bad condition of the bodies, the families were advised not to open the coffins. They were not allowed to see them at the Forensic Anatomy either.
At eleven o’clock on Monday morning, Alberto’s family planned to hold the funeral in Ávila, where the agent was born, with the attendance of many personalities, including the head of the National Police in Madrid, Manuel Soto. “But shortly before, someone raised the alarm to the family, who learned that the body inside the coffin was not Alberto’s,” SUP sources confirmed to this newspaper on Thursday, after breaking the news The WorldAccording to this newspaper, it was Sandra, a sister of Juan Carlos, who wanted to say goodbye to her brother before the cremation at the Galapagar funeral home and, upon opening the coffin, discovered with horror that the body belonged to another person. To begin with, her brother had tattoos on his arms and the other man did not.
Chief Soto called the judge, who “no longer trusted anything and did not know who was who” and demanded the bodies “so that they could perform the autopsy again.” The bodies returned to the Forensic Anatomy Department on Monday evening, where they were not subjected to this examination again, but on Tuesday they underwent “other simpler complementary tests,” including checking fingerprints, according to a spokeswoman for the Madrid Department of Justice, which reports to the police. the Institute of Legal Medicine (IML).
What matters most is what happens closer to home. To make sure you don’t miss anything, subscribe.
KEEP READING
“Here we receive the bodies already identified, they are handed over to us, we perform an autopsy and they are returned. The problem clearly came from the source,” said the same spokesperson. The Traffic Division of the Civil Guard in Madrid also has no explanation for what happened and refers the matter to the court investigating the accident. “We remove the bodies together with the judge and the funeral homes are in charge of transporting them, and we lose contact there. We have not opened any case because we do not investigate errors in identification, but accidents,” said one agent. All of them point to the funeral homes. This newspaper has contacted both and Parcesa, which does not want to make any statements, has sent a statement in which it exonerates itself of the error, while it is waiting for a response from Funersierra.
“Our company only provided the judicial collection service, transporting the deceased from the scene of the accident to the IML, in Valdebebas. In other words, it did not participate in the rest of the funeral process: delivery of the deceased by the IML to the funeral home responsible for providing the service, transfers from the IML to the funeral home, reception at the funeral home, wake and departure to final destination,” Parcesa indicates in his note. “In the removal of the body and the transfer to the IML, the authorities present gave us an official document for the pertinent transfer of each of the bodies to the IML facilities, indicating the identity of each of them. At no time, as is usual in judicial collections, is the funeral home provided with the ID of the deceased, so it is impossible for the funeral home to guarantee identity traceability with the corresponding IDs. The funeral home is limited to delivering the documents with the bodies to the IML, with the identification carried out by the authorities at the origin,” the funeral home maintains.
The result was a situation as bizarre as it was painful. In Ávila “everyone was in shock and the family decided to hold the funeral without the body anyway, as a tribute,” added the union sources, who explained that Alberto and Juan Carlos, who was from a town in the province, “took advantage of the trip” in Alberto’s Passat, since they were both working in the capital that day.
The injured motorcyclist is a 54-year-old municipal police officer, named Jesús Pedro, from Las Rozas, who was also going to work in the capital on Sunday. He is in the Clínico hospital, where he underwent hip surgery on Sunday. The driver of the car that was driving badly, a Volkswagen Taigo, is also known to be called Juan Carlos, surnamed Baldeón, and to be a 27-year-old engineer. The other injured person is his brother Jorge Luis, a 28-year-old psychology student, who was admitted to Puerta de Hierro, where he was put into a coma after having suffered very serious head injuries. Jorge Luis remains in hospital on Thursday and the hospital is giving more information about his condition as the case is being brought to court.
The two brothers, from Valdemorillo, had spent the night partying in the bars of Burgocentro, a shopping centre in Las Rozas, with four other friends. After hours of dancing and drinking, the brothers went home around six in the morning and said goodbye to the others, who stayed in a bar. Jorge Luis was affected by alcohol, but, in the eyes of his friends, Juan Carlos was fit to drive. “He had drunk very little. He was not drunk,” one of them stressed to this newspaper on the day of the accident.
The key is whether the vehicle that was driving incorrectly did so voluntarily or by mistake. The initial investigations by the Civil Guard rule out the possibility that it was a suicide b
omber and suggest that it mistook a motorway exit for an entrance and travelled around five kilometres before colliding head-on with the other vehicle. The initial analyses determined that it was travelling at high speed and that it probably far exceeded the 120 kilometres per hour limit for the road, according to sources involved in the investigation. The accident occurred on a straight road with three lanes in each direction and a slight slope – in the case of the homicidal driver, uphill. At the time of the accident, it was pitch black and the road was dry. Speed and alcohol are being investigated as possible causes.
Agent Alberto, married with a young daughter, was assigned to the Salamanca district police station, in the Operational Response Group, the union says, where he was much loved. “At least they did not confuse the victims with the kamikaze,” the union says with some relief and as a conclusion. This newspaper has tried to speak with Alberto’s family, but they already have “a lot on their plate” and prefer to remain silent while they seek advice on whether they should take some kind of legal action. The family of Juan Carlos, who was a security employee at Cuatro Vientos, is also considering this route.
On Tuesday, the bodies were already properly placed at the disposal of the families, who had to go through the mourning process, the wake, the funeral and, now, the burials. The judge prohibited the cremation of Juan Carlos’s body, which was buried on Tuesday afternoon in Galapagar, and Alberto’s in Ávila.
#brutal #death #start #finish #bodies #victims #accident #confused
