Sentenced to 14 years for dismembering her ex-partner in Vizcaya

Soraya H., 51, known as the Rontegi butcher, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for the crime of homicide with the aggravating circumstance of kinship. According to the sentence, the woman stuck a knife at least once in the upper part of her body to her ex-partner, Roberto Colina, 62, with whom she lived in the neighborhood of Barakaldo (Vizcaya), at dawn on June 17 2020. Afterward, he dissected the body. The ruling also requires him to compensate the victim’s relatives with a total of 64,000 euros.

The jury found the accused guilty by a majority of seven votes against two and now the magistrate-president of the popular court, Elsa Pisonero, has set the sentence based on the verdict. The Prosecutor’s Office lowered the qualification of the acts of murder, for which he claimed 22 years in prison, to homicide at the end of the trial. “The juries lacked the fundamental and objective evidence: the corpse,” says the sentence. Only two legs were found severed at the knee, stored in bags, in an area of ​​scrub next to the Rontegi water tank. The rest of the body was never found.

When establishing the sentence, the judge has taken into account “the dismemberment of the victim, who was discarded as garbage.” She does not apply the mitigating circumstances claimed by the cocaine use disorder defense or acting in self-defense. The popular court considers that there is no evidence to show that the accused was being sexually assaulted when she attacked Roberto Colina with a knife, as she alleged in court.

According to the declared proven facts, Soraya and Roberto were in the bedroom at dawn when she wielded a knife and stabbed the man “once or twice”, as she admitted at trial. On the edge of the knife, a mixed DNA profile of both was later found. A trained Ertzaintza dog detected the smell of human blood in the room where the events allegedly took place and the dismemberment took place. Victim and murderer had maintained a sentimental relationship years ago, but, according to her, it had broken up when they resumed living together in February 2020.

“Lied”

Another of the indications that underpinned the guilt of the accused, according to the sentence, was the fact that “she lied about the whereabouts of the deceased to the Police, the media and the neighbors.” She gave several versions, that she had gone to Castro Urdiales (Cantabria) for a while, that she had pneumonia and that is why she did not leave the house or that she was with dangerous companies. The man was declared missing until his mortal remains were found in November 2020. Among them appeared hairs of the woman. Soraya, who has several children, some minors, has been imprisoned in provisional prison in the Zaballa prison, in Álava, since she was arrested by the Central Unit of the Ertzaintza in December 2020. There is an appeal against this sentence.