Tuesday, August 8, 2023, 01:24
The Second Section of the Provincial Court has endorsed the decision of the Investigating Court number 7 of Murcia to continue delving into the death of the butcher Santiago López in the corrals of the Murcia bullring on September 12. In a recent order, to which LA VERDAD has had access, the court dismisses the appeal filed by the company Toros Sureste SA, which operates the bullring, and confirms the investigator’s records in which it was agreed to reopen the case and call declare as investigated different professionals linked to the activity of the arena, including Ángel Bernal, administrator of the bullring. The private prosecution, exercised by the lawyer Evaristo Llanos on behalf of the family of the deceased, had opposed, for its part, the estimation of this appeal.
In its resolution, the Court supports the actions of the investigating judge and emphasizes the existence of incriminating evidence in the conduct of those investigated. The magistrates emphasize the possible negligence that could be caused by entrusting the butchering of the bull to a butcher, instead of a bullfighting professional. “Indicatively, the calls themselves to testify indicate that the task of accessing, firstly as the first person to enter the ‘frame’, after being stung and left for dead from the upper area by the corraleros, is always typical of a butcher,” underlines the resolution.
“A grave danger”
The Court emphasizes that a butcher is not an employee of the company that operates the bullring or a bullfighting professional, but rather an employee or agent on the part of the employer who acquires the meat of the animals. Given this fact, the Court also underlines the risk involved in the practice of stabbing the bull. «A bull, even badly wounded or mortally wounded, while it is alive, (…) is an animal that represents a serious danger to people».
The court therefore rejects the company’s appeal that pointed, in its brief, to a possible negligent action on the part of the deceased himself. A fact, the Chamber emphasizes, that “cannot lead to the fact that facts with such a serious result are not investigated.” The Court also alludes to the high alcohol intake that the deceased had presumably made that day – it yielded a rate of 2.31 grams per liter of ethyl alcohol in blood – and stresses that “it could have been one more piece of information that advised against absolutely that evening that the butcher accessed the area of the corrals and the ‘painting’, giving him the ‘punch of hand’».
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