The bookseller accused of the death of a man who entered his property: “That man had been shot somewhere else”

Pepe Lomasthe 81-year-old former bookseller, accused of the death, in the early morning of August 1, 2021, of the intruder who had entered his property, declared this Monday in the trial that is ongoing against him in the Provincial Court of Ciudad Real. He doesn’t even believe that the three shots he fired hit him. Nelson David Ramreza 31-year-old Honduran, who was found dead in the corral of his Valdelobo farm, located in the Las Atalayas neighborhood of Ciudad Real.

“That’s impossible, they had hit that man somewhere else. I didn’t get close to that lump I saw in any way, much less within five meters. At five meters with a chainsaw he cuts your neck and you don’t have time to say anything,” Lomas responded to the prosecutor, Jess Gil, when he pointed out that the first of the three shots that the bookseller fired was fired from five meters away. and not 10-12 as he maintains.

“I still think someone put it there,” he insisted that it was all a setup. “I am totally convinced that this is part of the plot of all the 40 years that I have been enduring“, he added in reference to the numerous thefts and destruction that he says he has suffered in recent decades on the property, for which he has filed, he claimed, up to 40 complaints without result. The Police would later clarify that there were 8 or 9 complaints since 2009. “There were destructions in the irrigation, in the trees… What I came to think was that they were making life impossible so that I could leave there and it would be at a better price,” he said.

The account of the events carried out by José Manuel Lomas, who came to board up all the windows of the house to protect themselves, starts a few hours before the death of Nelson David, the Saturday July 31When, around 4:00 p.m., he heard a noise, he went out to the corral, saw that someone had forced the entrance gates and surprised a person on his property. “A man who tells me: ‘Hey, are you Mr. So?’. ‘ Well no’. ‘Look, tomorrow so-and-so is coming to see you,'” said Lomas, who dismissed the intruder with “untempered boxes”: “When he was leaving, I tried to make him see that he wouldn’t come back there.”

Lomas went to a hardware store to buy another lock, but don’t warn to the Civil Guard or the Police about what happened. Why? the prosecutor asked him. “In 40 years I could have filed 40 complaints. They had never found a single thief or recovered anything stolen. You will understand that before that efficiency I was not going to go to the Police,” responded the bookseller, for whom the prosecutor asks for 12 and a half years in prison for homicide and the private prosecution, 25 for murder.

At nine at night, as alone, Lomas had dinner and went to bed: “Without any fear, like one more night.” Have the drip irrigation placed in the trees and many nights he would wake up at dawn and check that it was working well. That night, already August 1, he woke up around 2:30 a.m. He had breakfast and went for a walk around the farm. “The first thing I find is the strip curtain tied in a knot and the door open,” he said. “When I saw the knotted curtains, the first thing I thought was that they were going to take a painting or a chair, but maybe the robbery was me and it ended in a Guadiana swamp“if there are any swamps left in the Guadiana.”

Lomas, according to his story, continues advancing and sees a broken irrigation control box on the ground. “I was worried, I was scared, but I was really scared. They are coming for me, I don’t even relate it to what happened in the afternoon.” He then headed towards his bedroom: “In the room I had a loaded shotgun, which I always have because I live like in Fuerte lamo“.

-Why do you sleep with the loaded shotgun? the prosecutor asked him.

-Puff, for the same reason why I have all the doors and windows boarded up. “To defend myself from what might happen,” replied Lomas, who then clarified that he used it to shoot at the nests that the processionaries set up in the pine trees.

-Why didn’t you lock yourself in the house and call the Police?, asked the prosecutor.

“With the Police had thrown in the towel many years ago,” responded the bookseller, who, upon the prosecutor’s insistence as to why he did not ask for police help, said: “Look, I’m going to give you an example. If in a Social Security operating room, everyone they remove is sent to the funeral home, if something happens to my mother, I won’t go to that operating room.”

“I’d rather die defending my house than go out and leave it in the hands of some thugs,” Lomas concluded in response to more questions from the prosecutor about whether he found another solution other than going out holding the shotgun.

Armed, when he was already in the patio, he saw a lump. “I did not identify a human form, he was a conical shaped lump“, with clothes that were not summer at all, like Eskimo type,” described Lomas, who clarified that at that time he was suffering from cataracts, for which he has already had surgery. “And a chainsaw came out of that lump in this position,” he said. while pretending to be holding a spear.

“The first thing I knew right away was that I didn’t get close to that story, because I imagined it was a trap or in the worst case scenario that there could be someone inside,” said Lomas, who said he feared that the package was a explosive device or that someone would hold the chainsaw and could “cut the throat like Marie Antoinette.”

“I shot to the right, but from 10 or 12 meters and that didn’t move“Lomas told how he proceeded, ensuring that he did not aim at the “bulge.” He waited about 30 seconds and then fired to the left. “The same thing happened, it didn’t move.”

Having spent the two cartridges, Lomas went to his bedroom, loaded the shotgun again and returned to the corral: “I shot in the direction of what I didn’t know what it was.” He then headed to the entrance gates. “I heard the sound of voices, but voices that were leaving.”

The bookseller then returned, according to his statement, to the bedroom, replaced the third cartridge he had spent in the shotgun and called the Civil Guard, who referred him to the National Police.

According to Lomas, he then left towards the entrance to the property – about 500 meters away – to facilitate entry for the agents. “In the time it took me to go to the entrance to the road they could have put him in,” he said, insisting that someone put the body of Nelson David in his yard, who died from two shots that hit him in the chest. “This is part of the same plot, which is that I throw in the towel, when I’m not going to throw it away even if I hang myself with it.”

He did not approach the lump nor did he know that there was a body there until the Police informed him, he stated: “The first one who was surprised was me.”

-How did you go out to meet the Police without the weapon, were you not afraid that the attackers were still there?, the prosecutor came to ask him.

-I was doing all these things automatically, I didn’t think, I didn’t have time to think about things or their consequences. For me it was a matter of life or death.

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