Lucas Miranda was 15 when he was killed
A young man sentenced to 17 years in jail for the murder of a teenager in Palmela has been arrested in Faro, PJ police have announced.
According to Jornal de Notícias, the 20-year-old turned himself in after PJ police tried to locate him at his grandmother’s house in the Greater Lisbon area.
The case dates back to October 2020 when Lucas Miranda, aged 15, is believed to have been killed by two other teenagers at Centro Jovem Tabor, an institution for youngsters in “situations of social risk”. The body was only found five months later in a well.
The two suspects claimed that they killed Lucas Miranda as part of a plan hatched by the three of them, but this scenario was ruled out by Setúbal Court, which sentenced the two young men to 17 and 15 years in jail, JN adds. They were found guilty of hitting Lucas in the head with a powerful strike and then hanging him when he was already brain dead before dumping his body into the well.
“The accused lied by denying having dealt any blow to Lucas Miranda’s head,” says the decision of the Court of Appeal. “Both of them desired his death as the outcome and contributed to it, as they were at the scene at the time of the events with the admitted purpose of killing him.”
The court also found it proven that Lucas Miranda was depressed when he was institutionalised by his own mother and that “he wanted to die, but never asked for anyone to kill him.”
