The 72-year-old man who remained barricaded for 11 hours with a hunting shotgun since Sunday night in a home in Huétor Tájar (Granada) with his two grandchildren, aged 10 and 12, has killed the minors and committed suicide , as reported this Monday by sources from the Civil Guard and subsequently confirmed by the subdelegate of the Government in the province, José Antonio Montilla. The tragic event occurred after mediators from the armed institute tried unsuccessfully for hours to convince the man to stop his behavior. He had barricaded himself with a shotgun in the house after having an argument with his son-in-law and father of the children.
Sources close to the investigation suggest that the disagreements between the man and his son-in-law had their origin in the traffic accident that the septuagenarian suffered on March 19 and in which his wife and his daughter, mother of the minors, died. The two children, who were injured, were also traveling that day in the vehicle, which the man was driving and which left the road, as detailed in the local press at the time. The origin of the argument that occurred this Sunday is that the father of the minors told the perpetrator that he wanted to leave the house because he brought back too many memories of his wife, to which he strongly opposed. This Sunday marked just two months since the incident.
At around 8:25 this Monday, and after suspecting that the minors could have suffered an attack by the grandfather after spending the entire night held by him in the house, agents from the Special Intervention Unit (UEI) of the Civil Guard were displaced. From Madrid they attacked the house, at which point the man took his own life, according to what the Government’s deputy delegate said at a press conference. Inside the house, in separate rooms, the Civil Guard has found the lifeless bodies of his grandchildren. One of them had a gunshot wound, while the second appears to have been asphyxiated, in the absence of data from the autopsies.
Strong argument and death threats
On Sunday, at 9:45 p.m., several residents of Huétor Tájar, a municipality of 10,236 inhabitants in the Genil River plain, alerted the Andalusian Emergency Service that a heated argument was taking place between two men, with death threats, in a house on Alfredo Nobel Street, and they stated that one of them was carrying a shotgun. Civil Guard troops went to the scene, and the man was met with two shots fired into the air from one of the windows of the building “to make it clear that he was armed,” said the Government subdelegate. Among the members of the armed institute was a mediator who tried to convince the man to let his grandchildren leave and to turn himself in.
Given his refusal and the danger in which the minors were, a team from the UEI of the Civil Guard (a unit specialized in responding to serious criminal acts, such as the taking of hostages, kidnappings or terrorist actions) traveled from Madrid and, upon his arrival, he resumed contacts with the man to get him to surrender. The septuagenarian maintained the dialogue until five in the morning, at which time he announced that he was going to stop talking because in a few hours he had to prepare his grandchildren to take them to school at eight. When that time was reached and seeing that the minors – who had not been detected in the house for a long time – did not come out, the Civil Guard decided to raid the house. At that moment the man took the hunting shotgun, for which he had a license, and committed suicide. The bodies of the minors were already lying inside. The autopsy will reveal the hours and circumstances of both of their deaths.
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Fernando Delgado, mayor of the municipality, has influenced the state of dismay and pain in which the town has been left. “It was a hard-working family, good people,” he says in a telephone conversation with EL PAÍS. According to the councilor, the grandfather had been very affected by the traffic accident that cost the lives of his wife and his daughter in March while they were taking the grandchildren to the music conservatory, and was undergoing treatment. “It was bad, but we never thought it would reach this extreme,” he said. “Three days ago we were at parties, at the San Isidro festivities, in a race, our classmates were carrying one of the children in a wheelchair [porque todavía estaba recuperándose de las secuelas del accidente] and the grandfather was behind with a bicycle,” says Delgado. “Everyone, everyone you see, is crying.”
Both the grandfather, who had retired a few years ago after running an aggregates company, and the children’s father, who works as an administrative assistant at the local high school, were fully integrated into the municipality, where their families are from. , adds the councilor. The two families lived in the same building: the grandparents, on the ground floor, and the couple and children, upstairs. After the accident, the minors had continued living with their father in that house, according to municipal sources.
The Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno (PP), has been “horrified” and has sent the support of “all of Andalusia” to the family. “Dismayed by what happened in Huétor Tájar. My deepest condolences. “A lot of pain and helplessness after learning about this dramatic event. My most sincere condolences and a big hug to the family and relatives of the children, victims of this horror. “A lot of strength to the mayor, Fernando Delgado, and to all the residents of Huétor Tájar,” Juan Espadas Cejas tweeted, general secretary of the PSOE-A and leader of the opposition in Andalusia. A big hug to all family, friends and loved ones”, he has also written on social networks. Francis Rodriguez, president of the Granada Provincial Council. The Huétor Tájar City Council has declared three days of official mourning.
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