Carrer Agramunt del Prat de Llobregat leads to Plaça del 17 September. In one of the corners a large turtle and a bone crown a pleasant children's playground that is filled with creatures when they leave the schools. It is certain that the eight-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, who were killed by their father on Tuesday spent more than an afternoon playing on these slides. The man, a 42-year-old industrial engineer, previously murdered the mother, 43. He then drove to the local station, parked the vehicle and jumped onto the tracks so he saw the first train He was dragged to his death on the spot. Somewhere he left a note with four sentences. He asked for "forgiveness" and warned that "this is not a case of male violence".
In front of the detached house that the couple and their children moved into not even two years ago, a neighbor left a rose. They had not had time to integrate into neighborhood life in the area. In fact, during yesterday morning, the neighbors talked a lot and ended up admitting that practically the treatment they had with the couple was a greeting that was rarely returned.
At four o'clock in the afternoon on Tuesday, 112 received the warning that a man had thrown himself onto the train tracks. The judicial entourage traveled to the site and authorized the removal of the corpse. Somehow the Mossos d'Esquadra of the investigation unit of the Prat police station found a disturbing note. The man asked for "forgiveness" and warned that what he had done should not be described as "gender violence".
A couple of cops went to the family home to inform the woman of the death. Time passed and no one appeared in that house. Finally, and due to the anxiety generated by the note that the suicide had left, it was decided to jump through the back and access the house.
The three bodies were on the first floor, in the garage. The coroners who performed the autopsy on the three murdered victims yesterday determined in a first preliminary report that they had been suffocated. Mother and daughter were strangled with a noose, some type of belt or scarf, while the son was suffocated with his own hands. It is predictable that the deadly sequence started with the mother and ended up killing the children. Terrible in any case.
The man, Roberto Díaz Herrera, who would have turned 42 in November, graduated from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. He specialized in naval engines. And according to data from his LinkedIn profile, since 2018 he held an important position in the operations section of the Spanish multinational Naturgy, although he was currently on leave.
One of his university classmates went shyly to the doors of the house yesterday to try to confirm with his own eyes what he had been told. He did not want to make any statements other than to assure that his friend was going through a particularly intense depression that had plunged him into a bottomless well. A well that he inexplicably decided to drag the rest of his family into.
A few meters from his house, Manel runs a neighborhood gym that the man had signed up for. It's curious, because neither he nor any other user who shared machines at some point could remember the individual's name. Yes, he was seen arriving with his sports clothes on and exercising by following the steps marked in some application on his mobile phone.
Gabriel, another neighbor of the neighborhood, saw the man near the square on Sunday. "No more, no more. We crossed paths like other times, but I didn't even greet him, because he was one of those people who never greeted you back", he assured. He remembered seeing the twins, a boy and a girl, leaving the house with their mother.
What could have happened for the man to commit the three crimes? The homicide group of the southern metropolitan police region has taken over an investigation that the investigating judge of El Prat decreed secret. The communication office of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia issued a statement yesterday in which it warned of the non-existence of causes related to gender-based violence. There were no complaints, neither the El Prat municipal police nor the Mossos d'Esquadra had ever been called to that address for any incident.
Beyond the depressive episode suffered by the man, as confirmed to this newspaper by various sources consulted, other interlocutors referred to the economic problems the family was going through. In any case, the researchers were trying to find some other element that caused the reaction of the individual who decided to end the life of his family. Since he also used a particularly violent method such as asphyxiation.
With these two brothers, there are already five minors killed in Catalonia alone at the hands of their parents. A number that rises to seven in all of Spain. A few days ago, in Bellcaire, a father stabbed his five-year-old son several times. He also tried to end the mother's life by repeatedly stabbing her, but she survived.
In El Prat, the city remembered the victims and condemned the event with a minute of silence. Neighbors of the family gathered in the afternoon at the doors of the house to honor the murdered children and woman.
The investigators worked until well into the morning at the victims' home. They toured the rooms of a three-story house that had a jumping mattress on the terrace for the brothers. Perhaps the analysis of the phones or the reconstruction of the last moments of the killer's life can explain, if it exists, the element that triggered these last three crimes of gender violence.
