The crime of Samuel Luiz: a homophobic wick and a free violence unleashed

It is convenient to summarize in four strokes the facts that the jury gave proven and its translation into convictions. It happened at dawn from July 2 to 3, 2021 on the Paseo Marítimo de la Coruña near Riazor. Diego Montaña believed that Samuel and a friend, who did not know anything, were recording him with his mobile. And although Samuel clarified instantly that they made a video call, Diego did not attend to reasons and pounced on him after A threat of death with homophobic dyes: “Stop recording, to see if I’m going to kill you, fag.”

Homophobia turned on the wick and free violence consumed the crime. Alejandro Freire, aka ‘Llumba’; Kaio Amaral Silva, Alejandro Míguez and two other young people who were minors at the time of the events joined the aggression without even knowing why his friend Diego had started it. It was a wild beating, of more than three minutes, which left the victim in critical. Samuel, a 24 -year -old nurse who had gone up without putting himself with anyone, died a few hours at the hospital. The jury considered the responsibility of four of the five young people who sat on the bench of the Provincial Court of La Coruña. Catherine Silva was fought, then Diego’s girlfriend. The jury did not see reasons to involve it In crime.

The magistrate president of the Court translated that verdict with penalties: 24 years in prison for Diego and 20 years in prison for both Llumba and Kaio Amaral, in the case of the latter, because the murder is added the crime of theft with force of the mobile from Samuel. Alejandro Míguez was imposed ten years in prison as an accomplice of the crime committed by his colleagues. The other two involved, who were then minor, had already been condemned in a judicial process on the sidelines to three and a half years of internment.

Defenses resources

These days, the defenses of the four convicted have appealed in appeal before the Provincial Court to try to lighten the penalties and free their customers from several lustrous between bars. On the other shore, nor the private accusation, which represents the victim’s family, nor the popular accusation, which the Alas association exercises, wanted to play the letter of the appeal, despite the fact that the sentence did not fill all their expectations. Nor the Prosecutor’s Office. For several reasons. One, that “The sentence is perfectly argued and has a very good legal framework” After a verdict of the “very reasoned” jury, Serrano reflects. And secondly, for the consequences that an appeal would imply: «The way of counterattack would be to say that the jury’s decision was arbitrary. But that, in addition to the difficulty in prospering, would lead to the nullity of the trial and start from scratch. And something else: it would imply release Diego, Llumba and Kaio, who wait in pretrial detention for the sentence to be executed.

In any case, the prosecutor is still convinced that Catherine participated in the crime, not assaulting Samuel, but trying that the friend who was with him could not help him: “I still think the same, so I kept him in my final conclusions.” As for Alejandro Míguez’s reduction from the co -author to accomplice category, Serrano is satisfied: “I think it has been a good conviction.”

The head of the investigation shares that the sentence “is very well founded.” And early he believes that “Values” the exhaustive police work to identify the aggressors and gather enough probative charge with which to bring them to trial. But he is glad, especially, for the victim’s parents, “for the degree of compliance with the expectations that Samuel’s family had deposited in police investigation.”

“Any of us, or our children, could be in Samuel’s site”

Carlos Early

Research Chief

It was not easy. The career to face the authors of Samuel’s death started that same morning. Displaced to the area, they made a statement to the first witnesses, and soon they began to collect recordings from the cameras in the area. The traffic of the Portugal square was fundamental because it includes the beginning of the aggression, especially after a company managed to improve its sharpness. But also those of the Pub Pub, to which both the victim and most aggressors had come: «The most laborious thing was to vision again and again the video of the traffic camera Improved to name each person, through the witnesses and the clothes they carried, comparing them in some cases with those carried in the pub before the facts ».

Half a hundred witnesses paraded for the police station. Among them Ibrahima and Magatte, two young Senegalese who passed by and tried to help Samuel: “His statements allowed us to establish the sequence of facts since they intervened – Samuel was already on the ground – as well as the brutality of the aggression,” says the prosecutor. “They were very brave,” certifies the policeman.

But in those first bars they also declared as witnesses some of those who were later arrested. Kaio appeared to defend himself because his name circulated on social networks, and betrayed Diego and Llumba, among others. He also went to the police station when suspecting Kaio incriminated him.The del one helped the arrests fall in waterfall. Less that of Alejandro Míguez, who was delayed a few weeks.

Thus it was, in short, the investigation of a crime that the prosecutor was always clear that he combined homophobia and free violence. The animosity towards the sexual orientation that Diego attributed to the victim lit the fuse, so only that aggravating one was applied, also based on other homophobic expressions after the crime. But “the taste for violence” of his friends culminated murder. He was killed “for fun,” said the prosecutor in the trial. “The whole test suggests that the only possible mobile, except in the case of Diego, was that taste for violence,” Add to ABC. “A cowardly and cruel crime, any of us or our children could be in Samuel’s site,” the police certifies.

Serrano and early could not imagine that that weekend they were on duty, the “more inhuman and atrocious” crime they have faced were to be produced. And call to reflect on free violence. “Killing someone for their sexual orientation is terrible, but that taste for violence makes it even more cruel.”