Logroño, (EFE).- Francisco Javier Almeida has declared this Monday in the trial as the alleged murderer and sexual offender of a 9-year-old boy, Álex, in Lardero (La Rioja), that “the person who has done that” is not he, “is a different person”; and he has said that he does not know how to explain how the little one got to his house because he remembers it that day “in a haze”.
Almeida has testified on the first day of the trial with a popular court that is being held at the Provincial Court of Logroño, in which the prosecutor and the private accusations, by Álex’s family, and the popular one, represented by the Clara Campoamor Association, demand reviewable permanent prison for the crime of murder and 15 years in prison for sexual assault.
Almeida’s defense, exercised by a public defender, requests the acquittal, since it denies the involvement of the defendant in the events, which occurred in the La Rioja municipality of Lardero on October 28, 2021.
EVERYTHING IS CLOUDY
In his speech, this 55-year-old man stressed that since he was provisionally released from prison in April 2020 -after being convicted of the murder and sexual assault of a woman in 1998 in Logroño-, he no longer knew “how to act and he was going like a zombie”, because he felt “isolated and without the capacity for initiative”.
“There are things that I am not able to understand”, he has indicated, such as what he said to the boy in the park where he played dressed up for the Halloween party to convince him to accompany him to his apartment, where, he has assured, that the little “voluntarily and without forcing” agreed to have sex with him.
“Afterwards, everything is cloudy. I only remember that I covered his mouth and, when I realized it, something happened. I didn’t suffocate him, he lost consciousness. Later, I went downstairs with the child in my arms to ask for help because I thought he was still alive, ”she recounted.
He has also said that he had drunk a lot that day, although none of the five civil guards who have testified this Monday have ratified it.
HE DID NOT GIVE THE SENSATION OF BEING DRUNK
The Judicial Police sergeant who investigated the case has reported that, after the boy’s parents notified him of his disappearance, they began their search in the area and found the defendant on the stairs of his doorway with the minor in his arms. whom they tried to revive without success because he had already died.
“He did not give the feeling of being drunk and it caught our attention that he was wearing the fly of his pants,” he said.
On the child’s neck there were “injuries coinciding with a possible strangulation”, in addition to other injuries from having exerted “high violence” on him.
“Álex had no means of defending himself at all”, since, he specified, he barely weighed 28 kilos, compared to the strong complexion of the alleged attacker, who has detailed that he measures 1.86 and weighed about 88 kilos.
HE UNDERSTANDED THE SITUATION
Two agents of the Civil Guard from the nearby municipality of Villamediana de Iregua also participated in the search device, who were in charge of supporting the local Lardero police officers, they have declared that he did not respond to anything when he was arrested, but that he understood the situation . “The rights were read to him and he said that he did understand when I asked him,” stressed one of these agents.
These guards collaborated in maintaining the chain of custody of the wig and shoes of the child that Almeida was wearing, whose hands they preserved with bags to preserve the biological remains that he had; and they sealed his home.