The murder of Valentina Chirac has no end. This woman was murdered in her house in 2017. She was found strangled and wrapped in blankets on the floor of her bedroom, in Collado Villalba (Madrid). Her husband, David Arellano, was arrested three days later for the crime, after the funeral. He then entered prison awaiting trial, which arrived in 2020. That year, the accused heard the guilty verdict for the first time from the president of a popular jury. That president continued speaking when he went down the stairs of the Provincial Court of Madrid and said that he had changed the meaning of his vote so he could go home earlier. For this reason, the verdict was annulled and a repeat trial was ordered. This 2023 another new jury concluded that Arellano was guilty of the murder of his partner with aggravating circumstances of kinship and gender. This same week the sentence was handed down: 22 years in prison. But the court has not found the convicted person for a month.
The local police of Collado Villalba and Galapagar try, without success, to find the man sentenced since the end of September to notify him of the measures regarding his minor daughter, who he had with Valentina. But it has been impossible to find him. Now the judge has to decide if he issues a search and arrest warrant against Arellano so that he can go to prison to serve his sentence. For the moment, in a ruling to which EL PAÍS has had access, the magistrate has asked the prosecutor and the lawyers to allege what they consider about the “personal situation” of the accused and a decision will subsequently be made.
Arellano attended this year’s hearing as a free man because due to the annulment and repetition of the process, the maximum time that the law allows a person to be in provisional prison without a sentence had expired. On September 27, the jury unanimously found him guilty of the murder, but not of the sexual assault, which exempted him from the possibility of being sentenced to permanent, reviewable prison. The ruling states that the police could no longer locate him at his last address since the 28th.
According to the facts proven by the sentence, the accused and the victim went to dinner in May 2017 with their friends and when they returned home, at dawn, Arellano hit his wife on the head and strangled her until she stopped breathing. “After suffocating Valentina, the accused manipulated the crime scene in order to simulate that her death had taken place during a robbery at the family home,” the ruling states. To support this version, the now convicted man went that morning to a motorcycle circuit, to have a coffee at a bar and passed by a gas station. When he returned home at midday, he called the emergency services to report that they had broken into his house and murdered his wife.
The Civil Guard did not believe this version because they did not find any sign of forced entry into the chalet, the alarm had not been manipulated and, as they explained in the trial, this was not the case. modus operandi of a thief The jury also evaluated the reports from the court’s forensic experts, who ruled that the woman had died at dawn, and not in the morning, and that she had “fought for her life.” The specialists also concluded that the asphyxiation occurred when the woman had diminished abilities as a result of the head trauma.
For all these reasons, the sentence sentenced Arellano to 22 years in prison, a ruling that his lawyer, Manuel Alonso, already announced that he was going to appeal. But the judge also banned her from communicating with his daughter for 30 years and withdrew her parental rights. It is these measures, discussed in a separate piece, that the police have not been able to officially hand over to the convicted person because they have not located him for a month. The girl is in good condition and cared for by relatives, indicate sources close to the case. In the coming days a decision will be made on the legal status of the convicted person.
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