The Catalan regional police (Mossos d'Esquadra) may be closer to clarifying the brutal rape of a 16-year-old girl perpetrated in November 2021 in the municipality of Igualada, in the province of Barcelona.
Last week the Catalan police announced the arrest and custody of a 20-year-old man, a Bolivian national identified as Brian Raimundo C. M., as the main suspect.
On Tuesday, the Spanish media echoed a news that may be a decisive step to resolve the case. After searching the suspect's home in Igualada for 6 hours, police experts took pieces of clothing and other objects belonging to the suspect to a laboratory for analysis. According to the first preliminary results, DNA samples of the victim have been found in them.
"The satisfaction is enormous, for me, for the organization and for the working group that have worked intensely," said the chief commissioner of the Mossos d'Esquadra Josep Maria Estela in an interview with the Catalan radio station Rac1.
The arrested man, who has a history of sexual crimes, has been imprisoned since Saturday 23 April in the Brians 1 prison. The prison authorities have decided to place him in a special unit to prevent his suicide, Catalan journalist Anna Punsi wrote in her Twitter account.
RELLEVANT ÚLTIMA HORA: Els @mossos han trobat ADN de la noia violada a Igualada a l’habitació del detingut, que està empresonat des de dissabte a Brians 1 i vigilat perquè no se suïcidi. Les analítiques de les mostres que la Policia Científica es va endur dijous han donat positiu pic.twitter.com/92P34psQXt
— Anna Punsí (@punsix) April 26, 2022
The events occurred six months ago, when the victim went out at night with some friends to celebrate Halloween night.
Hit with an iron bar
The rape occurred in the early hours of November 1, after the young girl left the Epic nightclub in Igualada. Her intention was to go to the nearest railway station to catch a train back to her mother's house, in the municipality of Vilanova i la Geltru. It was just a 20-minute walk through an industrial estate, but the girl never made it to the train.
She was found, naked and unconscious, around 6 in the morning in a field near the station by a trucker who notified the emergency services. In addition to being raped, she was beaten with an iron bar in the head.
The girl had to be hospitalized for more than a month at the Sant Joan de Deu Hospital in Barcelona and needed to be operated on 5 times. Due to the aggression she suffered, she has had serious consequences, including hearing loss in one ear.
The suspect apparently had no previous relationship with the victim. According to the Catalan police, the investigation has been especially complicated because the victim does not remember anything about the events and because of the poor quality of the footage from security cameras in the area.
