Seven years in prison for man who tried to kill PSP agent in Leiria

On Tuesday, the Leiria Court sentenced a man who tried to kill a Public Security Police (PSP) agent to a single sentence of seven years in prison when he was involved in a domestic violence situation.

A 41-year-old man, detained on a preventive basis, was found guilty of aggravated attempted murder, two cases of domestic violence (against his daughter and wife, both under aggravating circumstances) and possession of a prohibited weapon.

The defendant was also ordered to pay €43.05 to the Ministry of the Interior and €486.16 to the Leiria Hospital Centre.

The defendant will have to pay the PSP agent 612 euros (travel expenses during sick leave) and 30,000 euros (for non-material damage caused before 18 October 2023, when the request for civil compensation was filed).

The defendant is also ordered to pay compensation, the amount of which has not yet been determined, for material and non-material damage caused to the police officer from October 19, 2023, “until the medical and legal confirmation of the bodily injuries and consequences.” suffered from him.

“These facts are very serious and unacceptable,” the chairman of the panel of judges said as he read out the decision.

The trial judge explained that the court did not believe the defendant, who has no criminal record, that he “picked up the knives to commit suicide,” that he “never intended” to kill the PSP agent, or that he did not remember “how he stuck the knife into that.

“All the evidence presented was to the contrary,” the presiding judge said, telling the defendant she hoped he would “refrain from this type of behaviour, particularly the use of alcohol, which exacerbates” such situations.

The case dates back to March 31, 2023, in the couple’s home in Leiria, when the woman, who was in the room with the accused, “called out to her daughter, asking for help,” according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP).

After her daughter entered the room, the mother told her that the accused wanted to kill her.

The defendant eventually pushed his daughter “with force, causing her to fall onto the bed, breaking it,” and punched the woman in the face.

Another family member eventually apprehended the accused, allowing them to take refuge in another room where another family member was located, who prevented the suspect from entering.

The woman contacted the PSP, which sent three agents to the scene, and the accused went to the kitchen to get two knives.

Police repeatedly asked the man to drop the knives, but he refused to comply, even saying, “Whoever comes in, they’re going to fall!” and one officer eventually used pepper spray to subdue him.

When the same agent approached him shortly afterwards, he hit him.

The arrest of the accused was only possible thanks to the intervention of the PSP Rapid Response Team.

That night, the PSP agent was taken to a hospital in Leiria and early the next morning he was transferred to a hospital in Coimbra, from where he was discharged on April 3.

On the 18th of the same month, the policeman was hospitalized in the Emergency Department of the Hospital Center and University of Coimbra after suffering a pulmonary infarction resulting from a “knife injury to the right great saphenous vein”, where he remained in the hospital until the twenty-seventh.

In the indictment, the deputy alleged that “the accused knew that his conduct, the instrument used and the area he struck and could reach were suitable to cause the death of the agent (…) whose status as a police officer he knew and knew that he was performing his duties, a wish which he expressed to him directly before striking.”

“However, he attempted to strike and punch the victim with the intent to take her life, aware of the lethality of the area he had reached and wanting to specifically target that area to ensure the victim’s death,” the deputy said, also noting that the man had caused his wife and daughter “pain and physical discomfort, shame and humiliation.”