- A court orders the burial of a girl in Zaragoza at the request of her mother, arrested for her death, and against the biological father
The Provincial Court of Zaragoza has sentenced the mother and stepfather of a two-year-old girl, who died as a victim of ill-treatment in the Aragonese capital, to permanent prison reviewable.
The presiding magistrate of the court, Alfonso Ballestín, handed down the sentence, released on Monday, based on the jury's verdict. Both the Prosecutor's Office and the private prosecutions demanded for the two defendants the sentence of permanent imprisonment as ators of a crime of murder with malice.
During the trial, held last week in the Provincial Court of Zaragoza, both accused each other of being responsible for the death of the little girl, who had up to 101 injuries from the blows received.
The jury's verdict considered it proven that Vanesa Muñoz, 30, Laia's mother, and Cristian Lastanao, 35, the little girl's stepfather, are guilty, by action or omission, of the tragic death of the girl on January 20, 2021, in the family home in the Aragonese capital where she lived with her three other siblings.
The verdict ruled out accidental death and when it came to pointing out that Laia's mother and her then partner, with whom she had her fourth child, were guilty of it, the jurors relied mainly on the conclusions of the autopsy carried out on the girl's body.
The forensic experts detected up to 101 injuries on her body weighing just 15 kilos, of which 73 were recent and 28 were old, because, they said, "they beat her to death."
According to the report of the specialists of the Institute of Legal Medicine of Aragon, 48 hours before her death the minor received a strong blow to the abdomen that severed her duodenum, an injury that she endured without any type of medical assistance. Neither her mother nor her stepfather called the emergency room and when they did, the girl's acute peritonitis was no longer solvable.
- Aragon
- Reviewable Permanent Imprisonment