25-year sentence for a man who escaped from prison and stabbed a grandmother to death in Calella

BarcelonaJAEM had accumulated eight convictions for robbery when he escaped from prison. The first sentence against him was handed down in 2010, when he was 45 years old: a court in Arenys de Mar sentenced him to two and a half years in prison for robbery with intimidation. A year later, in the summer of 2011, the same court convicted him for seven more robberies. In some cases, he had broken into the victims' homes—injuring two of them—and in one instance, he even entered the residence armed. Ten years later, on February 7, 2021, JAEM, then 56 years old and having escaped from Quatre Camins prison, broke into the home of a 96-year-old woman in Calella to rob her and ended up stabbing her to death. Now, the man has accepted the charges and a 25-year prison sentence.

The man's confession has made the jury trial that the Barcelona Provincial Court had pending against him unnecessary. The accused admitted to the robbery and the murder, as well as that he did everything while on the run from prison, where he had not yet finished serving his previous sentences. JAEM has now accepted a 25-year prison sentence, in addition to those he had already accumulated, and has also agreed to pay €200,000 in compensation to each of the victim's two children and €100,000 to each of her four grandchildren for the emotional distress caused by losing their mother and grandmother.

13 stab wounds

According to the court ruling, based on the defendant's confession, on February 7, 2021, JAEM was taking advantage of his escape from prison to stroll through Calella. At one point, he noticed the victim, an elderly woman. She was standing in her front door watching people go by. It was a single-story house, and the door was open, so the man saw an opportunity to break in. He scared the woman with a knife and easily gained entry. The woman tried to get away from the attacker by walking down the hallway as fast as she could. Even then, JAEM stabbed her once. He also covered her mouth to prevent her from calling for help and sat her down in a dining room chair to search the house. While JAEM was looking for something to take, he noticed the woman had gotten up from the chair and was heading toward the kitchen. He then knocked her to the floor and stabbed her 13 times in the back. The woman, the court ruling adds, "due to her advanced age and frail physical condition, was unable to mount any effective defense against the brutal and unexpected attack" by the man. The loot the man ended up taking consisted of a Xiaomi mobile phone, a Seiko watch the woman was wearing, 90 euros in cash, and several pieces of jewelry. The watch and the mobile phone were recovered during the investigation and would have served as evidence had the case gone to trial. The jewelry, however, has never been found, and the insurance company is claiming 8,830 euros for it.