The Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has sentenced three young people to one year and eight months in prison each for considering them the perpetrators of an attempted illegal detention of a minor.
The events took place on April 16, 2014 at around 5:00 p.m. in the municipality of Santa Úrsula when two of the convicted men were walking along the town’s highway while the other was in a vehicle.
In that same place was the victim who was 14 years old at the time and who they tried to detain when one ran towards her shouting: “take her, take her”, at which point she crossed where she was and the driver of the car skidded, he turned it and stopped abruptly.
To avoid being introduced into the vehicle, the minor ran to a nearby hardware store, for which the three accused left the place in the same car in a hurry.
The Prosecutor’s Office even requested a sentence of one year and eleven months in prison, considering that it was a crime of illegal detention that differs from kidnapping in that the latter is planned and has an economic motive, although the result is identical. .
In reducing the sentence, however, the mitigation of undue delays was taken into account, given the time that elapsed since the events occurred and that the crime was not consummated.
The Court considers that during the trial the young woman accurately, coherently and in sufficient detail described to the Court what happened without there being any doubt as to her credibility and the accuracy of her statements.
The young woman recounted that she returned by bus from the beach and that she was walking home along the road when the events occurred in a lonely street, so she did not see anyone who could help her.
Once in the hardware store, she hid under the counter in terror while an employee and a customer who were inside notified the police with the mobile of one of them.
At the trial, both indicated that although they could not see what happened or identify the defendants, they did have to attend to the young woman due to her state of nervousness.
There was a witness, who has already passed away, who at the time fully recognized the young people and confirmed the story offered by the minor.
The three defendants admit that they were in the place at that time and the distribution of roles that the complainant attributes to them, although they assured that they never intended to kidnap her or say “take her, take her.”
Her defenses maintained that the young woman misinterpreted what happened and that she perhaps thought, without foundation, that the defendants wanted to kidnap her, which they attribute to previous fears or to having been educated in fear, distrust and that in any case it would be a crime of constraints.
Regarding the deceased witness, they indicated that he was a man who had problems with alcohol, although the Court concludes that there is no evidence of that addiction or that he had any animosity towards the defendants.
The police detained the three young men shortly after when they were in the square where the sister of one of them was also present at the time the events took place.
The Court considers that during these years the victim has been maintaining a coherent and uniform story to the point of considering it “credible” and therefore believes it is proven that the three defendants acted in concert to “apprehend” the young woman and force her to get on the car, at which time the crime of illegal detention would have been consummated.
As mitigating factors, it was taken into account that the deprivation of liberty was never consummated and the “serious” undue delays that the procedure has suffered during all these years.
Likewise, the convicted are imposed the obligation of not being able to approach or communicate with the complainant, for ten years, once the sentence is final.
