The Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has sentenced Thomas Handrick, the German who in Holy Week 2019 killed his wife and one of his children with a stone and two more sentences to a reviewable permanent prison and two more sentences that add up to 39 years in prison. He tried to end the life of his second son, without success because he managed to flee through a distant and uninhabited place.
The Fifth Section of the Court has made public the ruling that gives legal form to the guilty verdict issued by the jury on February 4. The popular court found the defendant guilty of a crime of murder with the aggravating circumstance of treachery and kinship in reference to his son (for which the judicial authority now imposes a reviewable permanent prison sentence), of another crime of murder with the aggravating circumstance of kinship in reference to his wife (for which he is sentenced to 23 years) and of a third party of attempted murder with the aggravating circumstances of treachery and kinship in reference to his second son, for which he is charged 16 more years of prison.
The presiding magistrate of the jury imposes on the defendant a reviewable permanent prison sentence for the first offence, 23 years in prison for the second and 16 years in prison for the third.
The sentence declares proven that in the morning hours of April 23, 2019, in an isolated area of the municipality of Adeje (Tenerife) near the road from Ifonche to the Quinta, the accused attacked his wife, and with the intention of causing her death “hit her repeatedly with force using both her hands and a stone until she fell to the ground inside a cave, at which time she hit her with a stone weighing about eight and a half kilograms until her skull was crushed and ultimately cause his death.
It adds that the defendant, in order to carry out such an act, had intentionally led his wife and two sons, aged seventeen, to an isolated place where they could not receive any help, “without the possibility of defense.” effective”.
According to the Chamber, when the defendant’s eldest son came out in defense of his mother, he was “violently and repeatedly beaten by his father with his hands and using stones until he himself fell to the ground inside a cave.” There the condemned man killed him in the same way as his mother.
The ruling adds that, after witnessing his father attacking his mother and brother, the youngest son of German “decided to flee the place, leaving the accused, in the belief that he would not survive, given his ignorance of a narrow and lonely terrain. ”.
In addition to the criminal convictions, the sentence imposes various accessory penalties on the defendant and requires him to pay compensation worth tens of thousands of euros.
The ruling is subject to appeal.
