As the hours go by, there are more and more details of the gruesome event that took place in the early hours of last Monday in the town of Huétor Tájar, in Granada, where a 71-year-old man murdered his two grandchildren, aged 10. and 12, before committing suicide.
As El Correo de Andalucía points out, the man suffered from depression after carelessness while driving caused the death of his wife and the mother of the two minors in the middle of last March.
After the event, the man criticized that his son-in-law did not let him see his grandchildren. Therefore, on Sunday he went to his home and, at gunpoint, stole them from his house and took them with him, while his father went to the authorities to ask for help.
The police are now studying what happened, and point out that the man would have shot one of the minors and suffocated the other shortly after the oldest called his father to ask him, with apparent calm – they point out from the local media – if he could ” “staying the night at grandpa’s house.”
The Plaza del Pósito de Huétor Tájar, in front of the Town Hall of this municipality in the Poniente of Granada, hosted a minute of silence last Monday in which around 3,000 residents, according to Police calculations, paid tribute to the ten and twelve year old children. whom his grandfather killed after barricading himself in his house.
It was the end and followed a day “to forget”, as the mayor of the municipality, with some 10,500 inhabitants, Fernando Delgado, indicated to journalists in a statement about an event about which expressions of condolences have arrived from all institutions. Thus, the Minister of Youth and Children, Sira Rego, said she was “deeply shocked by the terrible news of the murder of two minors in Huétor Tájar, allegedly at the hands of her grandfather.”
Rego sent “all” his affection to “the family members and loved ones of the minors,” stressing that “violence against children has to be eradicated” from society, in a message through his profile on the social network , consulted by Europa Press.
Also on social networks, early in the morning, the president of the Andalusian Government, Juanma Moreno, expressed that he felt “horrified” after learning that this 72-year-old man had murdered his two grandchildren in Huétor Tájar, a fact which he described as “terrible.”
The president of the Granada Provincial Council, Francis Rodríguez, has conveyed his “deepest condolences” to the relatives of the two minors who lost their lives at the hands of their grandfather, who later committed suicide, after remaining barricaded since Sunday and armed with a hunting shotgun in the house.
Throughout the day, the residents of Huétor Tájar have remembered the accident of the car that the grandfather was driving on the afternoon of March 19 in the municipality of Loja, in the same region, and in which his daughter and mother of the children died. two minors, who were also in the vehicle.
The children were admitted to a hospital with a favorable evolution; they survived the accident with their grandfather. Days later, the elderly man’s wife and the minors’ grandmother, who was also traveling in the same car, also died as a result of the trauma suffered in the same accident.
“The accident was tragic for the entire town” but what happened this Monday was a “total tragedy,” indicated the mayor, who suspended the last day of the festivities for San Isidro in the morning and decreed three days of official mourning. in Huétor Tájar.
The classmates from the San Isidro school and the Huétor Tájar institute where the two children were enrolled receive professional psychological help in the classrooms, along with their teachers, as indicated by Delgado in reference to specialized assistance activated by the Emergency Coordination Service 112 Andalusia. .
The Civil Guard agents broke into the home around 8:25 a.m. this Monday after verifying that there were no movements in the family home.
Several neighbors alerted 112, around 9:45 p.m., that moments of tension and “conflict” were being experienced at the home between the grandfather and the children’s father, who at one point left the home where Then the old man would barricade himself in with the younger ones. Sources close to the investigation have told Europa Press that the grandfather’s license was taken away after the accident on March 19 in which his daughter and his wife died, and he was having discussions with his son-in-law because he continued driving.
The same sources specify that it was the children’s father who showed up at the house last night and told the agents about the conflict he had had since the accident with his children’s grandfather, who would not hand over the children to him.
Among other personnel and police forces, members of the Special Intervention Unit (UEI) who arrived from Madrid traveled to the home and remained stationed next to the home. A negotiator maintained constant conversations with the old man to get him to stop his attitude without him having “at any time” left the shotgun that he was carrying in his hands.
What’s more, upon the arrival of the agents he fired two shots into the air from the window to warn that he was armed, which immediately led the Armed Institute to activate the protocol for these cases. Contact was cut off around 5:00 a.m., when the man told the agents that he could not continue talking because in a while he had to prepare the children to go to class, Pedro Fernández told journalists.
The agents waited for this milestone to occur, using the technological means at their disposal to listen and make as visible as possible what could be happening inside the home. However, 8:00 a.m. and the little ones leaving to go to school did not take place.
