Cristina Hodgson
A MAN has murdered his wife and two children before taking his own life in Andalucia.
According to official reports, the man slayed his wife, 46, and his two children, 12 and 17, before jumping off a balcony yesterday morning.
The incident occurred in Ubeda in Jaen.
The wife and minors reportedly suffered severe stab wounds before the 52-year-old father, who had no previous records for gender-based violence, threw himself out of a fourth-floor window.
The alarm was triggered at 8.20am when Policia Nacional received a call from the emergency service 112 alerting them to a man who had fallen to the street from a fourth floor flat in Plaza de Palma Burgos in Ubeda and that inside the apartment were several injured people.
Officers who arrived at the home found a young man with brutal injuries on the landing of the stairs and a woman and a minor dead and with severe stab wounds.
The adolescent, who was swiftly transferred to the San Juan de la Cruz hospital in Ubeda, died a few hours later.
According to the Government Delegation, there are no records of previous gender violence complaints against the father.
The City Council of Ubeda has called for a minute’s silence today, Monday, at 12 noon, and will declare three days of official mourning.
Mayor Antonia Olivares has sent her ‘deepest condolences on behalf of herself and the city council to the family of the three deceased.’
The incident takes the death toll of women in Spain who have lost their lies at the hands of their partners to 21 this year. Five of which have taken place in Andalucia.
Of the total number of gender violent crimes recorded this year, another two were also filicides (the killing of a child by a parent).
On January 6, in Esplugues de Llobregat (Barcelona), a 27-year-old man murdered his wife, aged 28, and his daughter, aged 3 in Spain’s first gender violence crime of 2020.
On March 11, a man killed his wife and daughter, aged 56 and 24, in Abanto-Zierbena (Bizkaia).
Since the official count of these murders in 2003, 1,054 women have died in Spain victims of gender violence.
