The crime of Samuel Luiz “was a group action, inhuman and atrocious”

Chance wanted this Police investigator to be on duty that weekend. He was soon alerted to a violent death of a young man after a beating in a drinking area. And they set off. “We activated the entire investigation team, which was incorporated in the following hours,” he said when asked by the prosecutor. They moved to the scene of the crime, the area around the Riazor promenade. And on the ground they began to identify some witnesses, while the scientific police took over the visual inspection. At that moment they already located a key witness: Lina, the friend who was with Samuel when he was lynched, which provides the first details and marks the “route” and basic data of the fatal beating.

Between Saturday and Monday they heard from 15 witnesses. They were the wickers with which the investigation began, to which another important element was added in those initial moments: the recordings of a traffic camera from the immediate Plaza de Portugal. In them you can see the tumult that ended Samuel’s life. Unfortunately, it was an old camera and its resolution was not the best. Silhouettes could be distinguished, but it was insufficient to identify those involved.

With these assets, they made an effort to question witnesses about the clothes worn by everyone who was there, most of them young people who had gone out partying on what was the first weekend that nightlife venues opened during the pandemic. They wanted to compare their clothes with those of the silhouettes that appeared in the poor traffic camera images. Some witnesses provided “participant data, names, descriptions or Instagram nicknames,” recalled the head of the investigation in the popular court trial being held in the Provincial Court of La Coruña. With these pieces, the agents were “fitting the puzzle together.”

One of those first to testify, specifically number 13, was Kaio Amaral, one of the five alleged perpetrators of the crime who now sits in the dock. He showed up quickly at the police station saying he wanted to “collaborate.” “He gave us data that we see makes sense,” this police commander acknowledged. Kaio identified Diego Montaña and Alejandro Freire, alias ‘Llumba’, as the aggressors of Samuel Luiz, whom neither of them knew at all. It was the statements of Kaio and those of his girlfriend at the time that gave the key to arresting Llumba, Montaña and Catherine Silva, the latter’s then partner, who is not accused of hitting Samuel but of trying to prevent him. his friend could help him.

Lies of the accused

But these testimonies were taken “with great caution,” said this police chief, because they were aware that someone could lie or hide information to try to protect themselves. They think it was the case of Kaio: “He lied to us, he told us that he had only tried to separate his friends.” They discovered it when they questioned Óscar, a friend, who “involved Kaio by saying that he had kicked at least one.” It was not the only point in which Kaio did not tell the truth: he also said that that night he was dressed in clothes that he was not really wearing. When they found out what clothes he was wearing, they watched the traffic camera again – now with the clearer images after being treated – and saw that “he gets up, runs at high speed and raises his left leg to hit.” And that “coincides with what Oscar testified.” His testimony precipitated Kaio’s arrest.

Investigators collected footage from more security cameras; among others, those of the Andén pub, where the majority of the accused had been that night, and those of a vending machine shop, close to the place where Samuel Luiz ended up collapsed. «The following months “We dedicate ourselves to viewing those images over and over again to certify who is who,” the police officer said. And fifty testimonies compared them.

These investigations ended with the arrest of Alejandro Míguez, the fifth defendant, at the end of September. They found out that he had lied when, two months earlier, as a witness, he “distanced himself from the action.” «We managed to position it, many images were seen and we were able to capture it from the moment it stood up, “He is seen running after Kaio and enters the group of aggression, where at a given moment he is thrown away.” Another witness said that Míguez told him shortly after that he had not been able to “do anything because a black man grabbed him.” He was referring to one of the Senegalese who tried to help Samuel from the attack that ended his life.