The death of Sofía Tato was counted as the number 36 that charged gender violence in Spain in 2017. Yesterday, Thursday, the popular jury that has judged this week in the Provincial Court of Cáceres her husband, Santiago Cámara , acquitted him for unanimity of a crime of homicide considering that the man acted in legitimate defense.

Sofía Tato Pajares, housewife, 42, woke up dead on August 24, 2017 at her home in Arroyo de la Luz (Cáceres). She had been married for 14 years to Santiago Cámara, a 42-year-old bricklayer, and the marriage had two daughters, 9 and 11 years old at the time, who were at home when the events occurred. There were no previous complaints or apparently conflicts between them.

Sofia's body had a deadly stab in the chest. Her husband, also badly wounded by a knife, had a chest wound and several cuts to the body. Santiago Cámara entered the ICU, where he spent several days, and was sent to prison when he left it. The Arroyo de la Luz city council decreed two days of official mourning and a rally was held under the motto "No to violence against women."

In December 2017, after 93 days in prison , Santiago was provisionally released pending trial. His version of what happened began to square with the data collected by the researchers. He said that, around seven in the morning of that day, when he was still lying down, his wife had attacked him with a knife and that in the struggle the weapon stuck in his chest. "It was all very fast, my wife stabbed me and said: 'I'm going to kill you and your daughters,'" he said during the trial, according to local press reports.

The nine members of the jury tribunal, supported by evidence such as the Criminalistics report of the Civil Guard, which pointed out that Sofía started the attack, have given reason to the defense thesis and have opted for acquittal. "As for authorship, there was no doubt whatsoever," explains Emilio Cortés, Santiago Cámara's lawyer. "What we wanted is for some exemptions to be contemplated, fundamentally the insurmountable fear and the legitimate defense, when understanding that their action was the consequence of an alteration of their understanding due to the slashes they had previously received," he adds.

The Prosecutor's Office requested three years in prison for homicide with the incomplete defense of legitimate defense and the aggravation of kinship. The private accusations, brought by Sofía's parents and by the Extremadura Regional Government on behalf of their two daughters, requested 12 and a half years for homicide. "He was pending that the verdict was favorable and not go down in history as a free assailant who had killed his wife in a little less than capricious way," says the lawyer.

Sofia Tato had a latex glove in the hand with which she held the knife, which fueled the hypothesis that she intended to simulate a robbery to justify the bulky amount of money that was missing from the marriage accounts.

Emilio Cortés has another theory about the mobile. "She had been making available to the bank all the savings of the family, around 108,000 euros, and that money had been sent to different European and, above all, African countries, where it would become a form of scam, Nigerian letters or something similar, "he explains.

"Then, she begins a series of actions or maneuvers to cover up that situation that seems to embarrass her or that she does not want to be discovered. The day the crime happened, they met with the director of the entity to facilitate it for my client an explanation of where the money had gone. The motive may be that my client had already planted himself before so many lies, forced a meeting with the director of the bank and she, to avoid the truth being known, tried to kill Don Santiago " .

The lawyer also announces that, regardless of whether the accusations appeal against the sentence or not, he will ask that Santiago's parental rights be returned to him, which he was deprived of as a precautionary measure. The minors, who are 14 and 12 years old today, have passed the last three, since the events occurred, with the maternal grandparents.

"The natural thing is that if the reason that kept them away from their father has disappeared, they should continue living with him, with the corresponding psychological help that is deemed necessary," says Cortés. "And, above all, what I do hope, and it is a personal desire, is that these daughters be reasonably explained what has really happened, what Justice says has happened, so that they can understand what happened that morning in August 2017. "

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Know more

  • Justice
  • Gender violence
  • Cáceres
  • Estremadura

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