The testimony of the priest of Algeciras: "The catechist got on her knees and said 'don't kill me, don't kill me'"

• Events The attack on two churches in Algeciras with one dead and four injured is investigated as terrorism

Juan José Marina

is the parish priest of

church

whose sacristan,

, died this Wednesday after being stabbed.

"I was not there at the time, because I am also a vicar and I was celebrating confirmations in a neighboring parish, in

", the priest begins the story of what happened.

"In the middle of the ceremony that I was officiating, they entered the church and said that a jihadist attack had been committed in La Palma and then I immediately went there."

Upon arriving in the area, he explains, Diego Valencia was found already deceased at the doors of the church.

"My sacristan was dead in the middle of the Plaza Alta with his head open," he says by phone, still in a state of

.

When the attacker entered the church, he says, the priest who replaced him had already finished officiating the mass and had left, while Diego Valencia was collecting the utensils for the ceremony.

There were also some faithful praying.

“The attacker got on the altar table and began to throw the things that were on top of him.

The sacristan began to rebuke him and when he realized that he was carrying a machete he started to run, he was able to escape, but he caught up with him in the street and killed him, killed him, killed him," he repeats incredulously.

According to what those who were in La Palma told him, the attacker was expressly looking for the priest.

"And when he saw an elderly person coming out of the sacristy [Diego Valencia], he thought it was the priest, that's why he went after him," explains Juan José Marina.

«He met the catechist first and she got on her knees: 'Don't kill me, don't kill me', and he went to whom he believed he was the priest.

Apparently he was shouting: 'Allah is great, Allah is great, you are going to die' ».

Diego Valencia Pérez, 65, was married and had several children.

He ran a flower shop in Algeciras, where he was well known and appreciated.

«What an absurd and inexplicable death, what God can reward a murderer?

Diego, rest in peace, surely you already enjoy the presence of the Lord and his blessed mother", they commented in the statement about his death that the

, from the church of La Palma, hung shortly after the murder in his Facebook account.

"Lord, take Diego into your bosom, who has given his life to defend your house," said another parishioner.

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