Minor implicated in Manresa murder had stabbed a waiter a month earlier
One of two juveniles detained for the homicide of Carles Vilajosana in Manresa left a youth detention centre a month ago with an extensive police record.
Background of the minor detained for the Manresa crime: "Without saying anything to me, he stabbed me"
According to Google News ES — Crime, one of the two minors detained for the homicide of Carles Vilajosana in Manresa (Barcelona) already had a long police record before the night of the crime. Pere O., aged 15, had been admitted in May to a youth detention centre accused of violent robbery, attempted homicide and assault. It was approximately a month after he had left that centre when he was detained again, in the early hours of Tuesday, for his alleged participation in the fight in which Vilajosana, aged 45, died.
The fatality from that night was allegedly stabbed by Otman A., aged 16, the other minor detained. The judge has ordered both youths to be held in a closed centre, one of them with additional therapeutic treatment.
The testimony of the waiter attacked in April
Jordi, a waiter at the D1D2 sandwich bar in Manresa, tells his story from behind the counter. On the night of 8 April, after eleven o'clock, he was clearing the terrace when two young men approached him. "They turned their faces partly so the security camera wouldn't catch them," he recalls. One of them kicked a bin for no reason and threw several glass bottles on the ground. When Jordi reprimanded them for their behaviour, the response was immediate. "I said to him: where are you going? And then he came up to me with his fist raised and, without saying anything to me, he stabbed me here in my left arm," the worker recounts.
What Jordi initially believed was a knife turned out to be "a star-head screwdriver", according to what police later informed him after finding the weapon near the scene. The object penetrated four centimetres into his arm. Jordi entered the bar bleeding and called for help. "I had the reflex, or the instinct, to jump backwards. If it had been a bit more to the right, the dead man would be me," he states, pointing to the small red mark he still bears near his shoulder as the only visible consequence.
Police record and criminal environment
Police sources detail that Pere O. has accumulated three prior arrests for violent robbery, attempted homicide, vehicle theft and driving without a licence. The case of the attack on the waiter is also included in his judicial records. His companion, Otman A., is linked by Catalan police to motorcycle thefts and the violent robbery of a mobile phone. Both, according to the same police sources, move in criminal circles and are regulars at an occupied building in the city.
The murder of Vilajosana during the festival
The death of Carles Vilajosana has shaken Manresa. The man, father of two children, actively participated in the social life of the Bages region. The investigation indicates that Vilajosana attended the correfoc that closed the festival and intervened in an initial fight to separate the two minors from another group. Hours later, when returning home with his friends, they came across the young men again. According to witnesses who have given statements to the Mossos d'Esquadra, Pere O. threw a cone at them, which triggered the confrontation. It was then that Otman A. allegedly drove a knife into Vilajosana's chest. The description provided by witnesses allowed the Mossos to identify and locate both minors.
"What cannot happen is that they come in one door and leave by another"
Jordi acknowledges that in the months following the attack he avoided enquiring into the judicial process against his attacker. "In the first days I kept looking from one place to another. I mainly want to live peacefully," he says. The waiter does not know if he has crossed paths with Pere O. since then, given that the attacker had his face covered during the attack and he would not be able to recognise him. The minor's second detention took place just 150 metres from the bar's door, a proximity that does not go unnoticed by Jordi. "What cannot happen is that they come in one door and leave by another," he laments.
Source: Google News ES — Crime (es)