There are many ways to love children, but none shakes more than the one that causes the death of a child. It is the most lethal “could have happened to me,” an impossible-to-conceive bullet that whistles past, something that you don’t get out of your head for days. The same days that are dedicated to the care, overprotection and affection of their own children out of sheer instinct for survival. It was observed this Sunday in the Entrerríos de Lardero square, a small Riojan municipality annexed to Logroño. Here they had killed Alex, a nine-year-old boy who was playing with his friends in a small park on Thursday. The place is located 100 meters from the building in which the child was murdered, allegedly by a man with a history of sexual violence and murder who had taken him there with tricks.
This Sunday there was a concentration in the square, full of flowers and bouquets and occupied by entire families from Lardero and Logroño. And many children played on the same slides as Álex, others were messing around, some were running around. A tragedy like this, from an individual crime, becomes a collective tragedy.
Gonzalo Martín, Álex’s great-uncle, says it with his mask tight, his voice strong but calm. The child’s parents? “Killed, killed.” The grandparents? “Defeated, sunk.” The boy, he says, evaporated in a minute. “Alex, we have dinner in a minute,” his mother told him. And remember the great-uncle who disappeared from sight in that minute. When he went out to look for it, it was gone. They had taken it.
“They did not leave their children alone for a minute,” he says, referring to Alex and his six-year-old younger brother, whom he cared for. “They were always pending. I don’t think he took it because of a parent’s oversight. They were very dedicated to their children, they gave them an education and know-how ”.
In the Plaza de Lardero, there is a rumor about the reasons why a child as agitated and funny as Álex, crazy about theater and costumes (Halloween was one of his most anticipated days), ended up leaving the park with, presumably, Francisco Javier Almeida . The boy’s great-uncle does not believe that, contrary to what was published by the media – also EL PAÍS – following what was said by a girl who said she was listening to the conversation, the trap was to show him a puppy. Not even the birds that Almeida had and that served him, to no avail, as bait. “He was not trusting and we do not believe that the murderer deceived him by telling him to go see a puppy, because we have a German shepherd and the kid has a phobia of dogs. And neither was he deceived by some little birds, ”says Martín, speaking in the present of his great-nephew.
But what is here, in addition to grief, is outrage. The one shown by the protesters who, after minutes of silence, look for journalists’ microphones and recorders to launch the same message that the family spokesperson is sending in front of numerous cameras. “Let Alex be the last. Justice could have done something against this individual that we have had loose. Justice does not have to release a murderer and leave him on the street when he killed a real estate agent and raped a 13-year-old girl. I think I would have to be in jail for life, ”says Gonzalo Martín.
“Today”, he continues, “it happened to me with Alex, but it could happen with any girl he tried to take to his field last week. There is no use asking for a reviewable permanent prison. Why, if for good behavior they have given 39 prison permits [cuando estaba en prisión]. In those permits he could do the same thing he did with my nephew. We are already fed up ”.
In this group of urbanizations, the bars are filled, three on the block, after the park demonstration. Everyone wants to turn the page and, at the same time, there is no page to turn. “My nephew will never come back. There cannot be one more ”, affirms this short and strong man, bald, whose family has been amputated in just one minute, the time in which any of the parents present here can lose sight of their children.
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