The 25-year-old suspect in the fatal shooting of a nine-year-old on Christmas Eve in Setúbal’s Bairro da Bela Vista has handed himself in, roughly 400 kms away in Vila Real.
The man, apparently with no previous police record, was also wanted for the ‘attempted murder of a 14-year-old’ shot at the same time as the younger victim.
This was a ‘garbled story’ that initially suggested two young boys had been ‘playing with a gun’ that ‘jammed’, requiring ‘a relative’ to try and unblock the jam ‘with devastating consequences’ (both boys receiving gunshot wounds in the process).
Today’s reports suggest the initial ‘garbled story’ may not have been factual.
The young man handed himself in hundreds of kilometres from the shooting. He has been subjected to an initial round of judicial questioning – and is now in preventive custody, pending formal charges of murder and attempted murder.
Reports today do not mention anything about the two victims having been playing with a loaded gun. They instead allude to the suspect having been using a gun, in the public highway, ‘in the presence of several people, including children’.
“In spite of being ‘told to stop’ his behaviour, the suspect ignored the advice”, explains a police source.
The gun he was using did indeed jam – and in trying to unblock it, the suspect shot the two children. He then ‘fled the scene’.
In the confusion that followed, the 25-year-old travelled north to Vila Real where he appears to have been staying until he handed himself in to police earlier today.
Source: SIC Notícias
