Last Wednesday, at dawn, the homicide group of the northern metropolitan police region arrested a man of Spanish nationality accused of participating in the preparation of the murder of Valentín Moreno. The young resident of the La Mina neighborhood, in Sant Adrià, died of a shot to the head on November 19, 2021. Someone, who has not yet been identified, approached the man on a bicycle and shot him. Moreno was conscious for a few minutes, he was still able to speak with his brother and with a municipal police officer from Sant Adrià that he had known since they were little, and he was transferred alive to the Can Ruti hospital where he died.
The arrest is the first stop in a highly complicated investigation that the homicide group has carried out with absolute discretion and with the support of the Moreno family. It was not easy to have their collaboration, but in the end, and in view of the fact that the policemen were only interested in arresting those responsible for the crime, the relatives ended up collaborating and trusting the mossos.
The detainee, of Spanish nationality and who today entered prison, is accused of participating in the preparation of the crime. A planned and organized event in which several people participated, from the long list of enemies that the neighbor of Sant Adrià had. Police work that in recent weeks has needed to broaden its gaze, outside of Spain, given the evidence that the subject who dared to pull the trigger traveled to Spain expressly to execute the order.
Valentín Moreno is part of the cruelest story in the chronicle of events of the last two decades in Barcelona. Payo raised in Sant Adrià de Besòs, in April 2000 he led the beating that ended the life of the 22-year-old Carlos Javier Robledo Peña from Santa Coloma de Gramenet. That case was baptized as the Vila Olímpica crime. The authors chose the victim at random.
That night, Valentín Moreno and a group of friends from La Mina celebrated the young man's 18th birthday. They stole a jacket from a nightclub, left it hidden next to the wheel of a car and decided to mercilessly attack the first person who dared to touch it. It was done by the young man from Santa Coloma who without the ability to react received a first punch from Moreno in the face, which knocked him unconscious. On the ground, he received more than fifty kicks, most of them to the head, according to the autopsy, during which it was possible to determine the brand and number of one of the boots that kicked him from the mark it left on his scalp. of the victim.
Valentín Moreno never apologized. Neither then, nor over the years, in which he continued to lead violent incidents after spending eight years in a juvenile facility.
Years later, he was arrested for leading the beating that six members of the Bada Bing soccer team inflicted on the South American players of Rosario Central. Valentín Moreno and his brother Israel were sentenced to six years for an event that had racism as an aggravating factor.
The last time Moreno was in the news was in January 2017, when he was the protagonist of a violent incident in the emergency department of the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona where his father had been admitted for a respiratory problem.
For some time, the man lived with his current partner, a member of the Granada clan, in some new apartments in Badalona, although he lived in Sant Adrià. He believed he was "untouchable", as several sources claimed yesterday.
The crime occurred around eight in the evening on Tarragona street. It was a full-fledged execution and from behind. "Whoever has dared to kill Valentín Moreno either did not know him or knew him very well and knew that he would only have one chance and he had to do it from behind," explained another good source from the neighborhood last night.
It was a single shot, practically point blank from a medium caliber semi-automatic weapon. A municipal police officer from Sant Adrià de Besòs found the shell of the projectile hours later.
Not even the shot to the head with the bullet in the brain knocked him down. When the ambulance and the first municipal police patrols arrived, Valentín Moreno was still conscious. He even spoke with the first agents who helped him until the ambulance arrived.
The news spread like wildfire in Sant Adrià and in no time at all, Moreno's family members gathered at the doors of the ambulance. Two of his brothers, her current wife, and her relatives. Some loudly swore revenge. But against whom?
Valentín Moreno had a multitude of open fronts, say police sources familiar with his most recent history. He dedicated himself to extorting traffickers, torturing them, he even carried out rollovers (robbery) from drug traffickers. Violent and cruel with his enemies, he had, in turn, an almost sick feeling of loyalty with those he considered his friends. And among them good people with whom he met when he was a child in sports associations in Sant Adrià and who had been warning him for years that one day someone would kill him and they would do it from behind, as he has been.
