Two and a half years trying to find Pol Cugat, murdered whereas guarding a marijuana plantation | News from Catalonia | EUROtoday

At 25 years outdated, Pol Cugat was attempting to get forward on his personal. “He didn't want anyone to help him,” explains his mom, Carme Peguero. For this motive, when he discovered himself penniless, he went to protect a marijuana plantation, with the assistance of an old style pal, in a distant farmhouse in Les Borges Blanques (Lleida). “If they had proposed to him to keep cocaine, he would have said no, no joke,” provides the household's lawyer, Josep Lluís Jordan. The work lasted about three months. On October 21, 2021, Pol was murdered in his precarious job, which his dad and mom have been unaware of. Since then, his physique stays lacking. “You can't say goodbye, you can't close the circle, and you wonder where you've failed,” laments his mom, who solely hopes that a type of concerned within the plantation will break the omertáand discuss a criminal offense that they tried to masks as a narcoasalto.

At least seven individuals know particulars of Pol's homicide: that is the variety of defendants held by the investigating court docket 4 of Lleida. Two of them got here to see his bloody physique, with a bag over his head, mendacity on his again on a mattress, along with his palms tied behind his again. They discovered him on a Thursday on the primary flooring of the Les Borges Blanques farmhouse the place he lived, however they didn’t report him to the Mossos till Saturday. And after they did, it was in a “confusing and imprecise” method, with out even offering a particular tackle of the home, in accordance with the police report. Well suggested, they went with their legal professionals and left their cell telephones at dwelling.

The household's principle is that it took them two days to go to the police to cover the traces of the crime and gather the marijuana they have been rising within the basement. The Mossos solely discovered the stays of a complicated plantation, with free cables from computer systems, followers and lights, and the stained mattress on the primary flooring subsequent to the pruning shears with which they think they killed him. On the day of the homicide they packed the crops indoor to ship him to Italy, the lawyer speculates. And that day additionally they needed to pay the 12,000 euros agreed to Pol for the three months of custody. Previously, the younger man from Barcelona had already advised his mates that he had plenty of issues along with his boss, that she “annoyed him”, that the connection was “fatal” and that he was going to ask for all the cash they owed him and he was going to depart He additionally complained to his mom, however with out telling her that she was guarding a plantation. “He told me that he was a forest guard, a gardener,” he remembers.

Before the police, those that discovered Pol lifeless launched the speculation of overturn: that different traffickers had killed him to steal the medication. And the Mossos thought-about it as a risk that precipitated, in accordance with the household, that discovering the physique was not prioritized. “We felt very alone,” Carme laments, in regards to the first searches. He believes that the Mossos approached it as one other case of drug trafficking. “They didn't even mobilize Civil Protection or the firefighters,” he explains, in regards to the expeditions to find his son. From these early days, he nonetheless remembers moved that the deployment of mates on the bottom made them ugly: “Now I will have to keep an eye on you because you are from Barcelona and you will still fall here.” “We went one way and the police went the other,” he summarizes. They have been additionally not supplied emergency psychological help. “I looked for the Mossos team to care for the families of the disappeared,” he complains.

The household needed to await the drug assault to be dominated out to really feel the trouble to search out their son, a standard, blissful boy, devoted to the mountains, who had labored in every little thing: in a nursing dwelling, disinfecting pig farms, within the bar within the city… The Mossos looked for him with drones and canine, with out success. While the investigators closed a circle that quickly narrowed round one individual: Alberto B., the 46-year-old man linked to the Borges Blanques plantation who didn’t present as much as report Pol's dying, as he had agreed with the remainder. , and which had since disappeared. Others concerned pointed him out, and the reconstruction of what occurred led to him.

One of the keys is Pol's automotive, a Renault Modus, which was discovered in the future after his dying, parked close to the agronomists' college in Lleida. Cameras confirmed a person exiting the car, sporting a particular hooded jacket and a white stripe on his higher arm. The similar jacket that Alberto B. wears shortly afterwards when he takes an AVE to Barcelona and when he reveals up at his mom's home. Whoever drove Pol's automotive was stained along with his blood, as a result of it was discovered on the pedals, the place the driving force's foot rests, and on the driving force's backrest. They additionally discovered Pol's blood on Alberto B.'s sneakers after they searched his home and on the Golf that the investigated individual normally drove. All this, along with the truth that he had not proven as much as report the dying on the police station, that his telephone was in airplane mode your complete evening by which it’s suspected that they disposed of Pol's physique, and that he had vanished in a single day. The morning they made him the principle suspect.

In the eight months that he was lacking, the police reconstructed the lifetime of Alberto B. His atmosphere outlined him as a person hooked on cocaine, very aggressive, who misplaced his mood when he used. This can also be demonstrated by his police report, for crimes akin to unlawful detention, assaults on authority or mistreatment. He lived a excessive lifestyle, drove luxurious automobiles, wore costly garments and paid in money, with no recognized job. In the searches within the room he rented in Barcelona, ​​the Mossos discovered varied notes about the price of beginning a marijuana plantation and the advantages he meant to acquire.

On June 23, 2022, Alberto B. appeared at a Mossos police station. Before, he had visited his mom, with a really poor look, lengthy hair and really skinny. His brother threatened to name the police, and ultimately he got here. “I know you are looking for me, I am not hiding from anything,” he advised the brokers. The choose ordered his imprisonment for the homicide of Pol, the place he remained till April 7, 2023. Since then, he has been free with the duty to seem in court docket each Monday. The teacher considers that there is no such thing as a new proof that justifies him remaining locked up, and that there is no such thing as a longer a danger of destruction of proof. Since he has been on the free, his former landlady has denounced him for threats.

“At 25 we all do a lot of stupid things,” sighs his mom, about what led Pol to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” His household—his dad and mom, his older brother, and his twin brother—are pulling. The solely hope is to search out his physique, which they think continues to be in Castelldans, a small municipality on the way in which to Lleida, the place they consider the assassin hid it. There Pol's telephone gave a sign for the final time. “We hope and hope that the cell phone is with the body,” confides Carme, who hopes that Google will lastly agree to provide them the placement that they haven’t achieved with the phone antennas. They additionally go to the media in case it helps to refresh recollections. Or in case any of Pol's supposed mates, the identical ones who advised her mom in court docket, with out daring to have a look at her face, or take a look at Pol's picture, that they might inform the entire reality, hold her phrase. .

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