A terrible and painful silence enveloped the Horta neighborhood of Barcelona yesterday afternoon. The temperature plummeted in the section of the Universal promenade where, early in the afternoon, the Barcelona Firefighters broke down the door to the ground floor of number 47 and had to take a step back due to the presence of a strong smell compatible with gas. . Inside, three bodies. The father and his two children, ages seven and ten.
A shocking and terrible story that shook the residents of this neighborhood who yesterday gathered at the bar of the Paqui cafeteria trying to remember who the man was and the faces of the little ones. There was little doubt about what could have happened and that the Mossos d’Esquadra are now investigating.
Early in the afternoon, some neighbors, including Isabel, who works in the cafeteria, heard a woman’s screams. A neighbor from number 47 had seen her shortly before her holding onto her mobile phone, at the doors of the building, talking loudly: “But how come she doesn’t know where she is? I just don’t understand why no one picks up the phone. “I don’t know where my children are.”
Not fifteen minutes later, the same neighbor saw how the Urban Police cut off traffic on the street, which was filled with trucks and an ambulance from the Barcelona firefighters, and vehicles from the Servei d’Emergències Mèdiques and the Mossos.
As soon as the firefighters managed to ventilate the room and secure the scene, the first police from the homicide group and also from the scientific police arrived. Shortly after, the judicial procession also arrived with the judge on duty and the coroner. They could only certify the death of the three.
Once again, and it is repeated too many times to the collective horror, it was the mother who raised the alarm. Her ex-husband was to have given her two children to him on the Sunday after the Christmas holidays. Not only did she not do it, but the little ones also did not go to their first day of school on Monday after the January holidays.
Firefighters located the home completely sealed off, with the windows and doors closed. Last night it was very early and hasty to specify what could have happened in that house. But the police, as well as those around the victims, did not rule out any hypothesis, from the domestic gas accident to the possibility, too often a reality, that the father murdered the two children and then committed suicide.
Few neighbors knew the man; he had moved to the basement of the building just three years ago, during the pandemic. The neighbors of the property – some evicted after the event – ??have explained to La Vanguardia how common it was to see the children playing in the backyard of the house and their mother coming on Sundays to look for them.
Little by little, in front of number 47 of the promenade, closed to traffic by the Urban Police, neighbors and some tenants of the property who were evicted from the property as a precaution began to gather.
Technicians from the gas and electricity company entered the home to confirm that there was no risk to the rest of the people. Some preferred to look for alternatives that night, which was going to be a long one for the scientific police’s work. Through the curtains of the ground floor windows you could see them working. The flashes of the cameras illuminated a terrible scene.
The neighbors warned of what could have happened to the rest of the property if the woman did not raise the alarm. There were no previous complaints in court between the parents.
