“Yannick went to his father’s house because he was going to introduce his girlfriend and tell her he was going to become a grandfather. But then he sent a message saying his father had attacked him. When I spoke to him on the phone he simply said: “I was just defending myself.” This was the testimony on Tuesday in the Sintra court of the aunt of the 17-year-old boy who is on trial for the murder of his father last July in Cova da Moura, in Amadora.
Yannick, abandoned by his mother at the age of three months and whose father never acknowledged paternity, is accused of killing his father by stabbing him in the chest in a dispute over the cost of gasoline.
But he claims it was self-defense, a version corroborated by his then-girlfriend, who lost a child, who testified in court that she saw Roberto Pina attack her son with a “stick covered in nails,” hitting him in the ribs with the makeshift weapon . Neighbors say they have never seen this bat.