The Mossos d’Esquadra suspect that the perpetrator of the Esplugues crime was suffering from a psychotic episode at the time of committing the acts. This has been confirmed by the Minister of the Interior, Núria Parlon, in an interview on RAC1, in which she also denied that the action had a terrorist motivation. “A priori, the detainee is a person who was in an altered state and probably has some kind of problem that has nothing to do with jihadism,” she stated. The Mossos have not found any neighbor who heard the arrested person utter jihadist slogans. For this reason, for now, the investigation has fallen to the Esplugues Investigation Unit and has not been transferred to the Central Information Unit, which is responsible for matters related to terrorism.
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The events took place last Saturday. A man of Moroccan nationality was arrested after stabbing a neighbor who had just left her house, on Joan Miró street in Esplugues. There was no prior relationship between them and everything points to the victim being chosen at random. The wounds he inflicted were very serious: stab wounds to the chest and abdomen until he finally slit her throat. The attack took place in the Finestrelles neighborhood, a very quiet residential area, with several blocks of flats whose windows face the street, located a few meters from the Sant Joan de Déu Children’s Hospital. Several neighbors witnessed the events from their homes and alerted emergency services.
An ambulance from Sant Joan de Déu was mobilized to assist the victim
The emergency service mobilized a pediatric unit from the SEM of the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital. While the ambulance was leaving the parking lot, a nurse ran to attend to the victim. Upon arrival, he began resuscitation maneuvers but immediately warned that the deep cut on her neck was incompatible with life. Two pediatricians and another nurse arrived shortly after and could only certify the death.
José Luis Pardo, a neighbor who had gone out to get the car, came across the scene. He had the vehicle parked on the parallel street, Pau Casals, and heard screams coming from the upper street. Both streets are connected by very wide stairs. He ran up and saw how the attacker was wielding a knife and lunging at the woman. “He was carrying a large knife and a towel wrapped in the other hand. He had an athletic build,” he recounted on RAC1. José Luis called his attention and the man headed towards him. “As he approached, I was backing up. He tried to stab me; I tried to hit him and he ducked, picked up a stone and started throwing them,” he explained.
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While the woman lay bleeding in the middle of the street, the neighbor tried to confront and restrain the attacker. The killer began to tear up tiles that had come loose due to the growth of tree roots and threw them towards the street. Some of them were aimed at José Luis’s wife. “The first hit the car, the second broke the glass and the third hit me and caused a bruise. Then I saw the next ones flying towards the car and thought: ‘I have to get out of the car and face him’,” he recounted. After the confrontation, the attacker fled towards Barcelona, where minutes later he was arrested by the Mossos d’Esquadra on Diagonal Avenue, in front of the RACC. The neighbor, who has appeared in several videos as a sympathizer of Aliança Catalana, explained that he also did not hear the attacker utter Islamist slogans.
The killer tried to assault an officer guarding him at the clinic
On the Diagonal, the officers drew their firearms while the shift chief of the Esplugues police station aimed a taser gun at him. The man finally dropped the knife and stones after being warned several times and was able to be handcuffed.
The woman was undocumented, but the officers located her mobile phone from which they contacted her family. A neighbor, also of Chinese nationality, who was walking in the area helped with the process. The attacker will be brought before the court in the coming hours. He was a known person in the neighborhood and in recent months had been involved in several altercations, according to the neighbor José Luís Parlo. Residents identified him after seeing a photo that circulated in WhatsApp groups. Shortly after his arrest, he was taken to a health center, where he tried to assault a Mossos d’Esquadra officer and had to be restrained. He arrived in Spain in 2007 and, although he left later, returned again in 2017.
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