The man convicted by a people’s court for murdering his wife in the Tenerife town of Los Cristianos must serve 22 years in prison and pay 100,000 euros to each of his two daughters, in addition to remaining 10 years on probation.
The judge when imposing the sentence has taken into account the aggravating circumstance of kinship, treachery and gender violence, as concluded by the jury, according to the sentence known this Friday.
Both the Prosecutor’s Office and the representation of the Canary Islands Institute of Equality and the private prosecution represented by the lawyer, Francisco Javier Piñón Candan, requested exactly that sentence, although the lawyer raised civil liability to 113,000 euros, while the defense limited it to 32,000. euros for each of the daughters.
Ángel SM has been in pretrial detention since he killed his wife on May 11, 2022 in an apartment he had rented in the south of Tenerife.
To do this, he first used round-tipped metal scissors with a 8.5-centimeter blade when the woman was lying on an armchair, and then went to the kitchen and took a 31-centimeter knife with which he followed the victim to the patio where he she tried unsuccessfully to close the door while screaming for help.
Finally, Ángel S. stabbed his wife several times in the abdomen and on the left side, causing her to collapse to the ground, as a result of which the corpse presented nine incised injuries, one of them on her own face and other fatal ones.
The couple was from Vigo, spent long periods of time in Tenerife and had been married for 56 years during which there were constant calls to the police because of the ill-treatment to which his wife was subjected, whom he harassed, despised and humiliated.
The jury made its decision on May 12 after hearing testimonies throughout that week such as that of a neighbor who saw how the woman took refuge in the patio and heard her cries for help.
All the police officers who testified agreed in reporting that after breaking down the door, they saw scissors, blood on the sofa and along a trail that followed to the patio where they found the deceased woman face down and the man face up, with a knife near his hand and minor injuries to his arm.
Once transferred to the hospital, the convict told them that he had first stuck the scissors into his wife’s neck and since she did not die, then he stabbed her, all because he thought she had ear cancer and did not want to die alone but with his wife. .
A version of events that the jury describes as “absurd” insofar as it cannot be argued that he went to the kitchen to defend himself from the attack of his wife, who in reality tried to flee.
This succession of events led the People’s Court to conclude that there was an aggravating circumstance of treachery inasmuch as the woman was suddenly attacked when she was lying down, the man was much stronger than her and the victim showed signs of having defended herself.
