Quick and forceful sentence for the two defendants for the theft of the 45 luxury bottles of Atrio, which occurred in October 2021. Quick because the last session of the trial was last Wednesday, so the magistrates have deliberated in just a few days. And forceful because the sentences coincide with those requested by the Prosecutor's Office, although it differentiates in its ruling the role that both protagonists of the robbery had: for Constantin Dumitre, 48, a Romanian-Dutch citizen, who receives the maximum sentence of four years and a half of prison; However, for Priscila Lara Guevera, the 29-year-old former Mexican miss, the sentence is somewhat shorter: just four years.
"It seems outrageous to me," the lawyer Sylvia Córdoba told EL MUNDO as soon as she learned of the sentence, which she has begun to study to offer a more in-depth assessment in the next few hours, although she has admitted that the penalties are a "stick" for his clients, who in his opinion did not expect them due to how the trial sessions went. "No conclusive evidence was provided by the investigation, only indications," the lawyer has always maintained.
The distinction between sentences for both defendants has to do with the role that the police investigation gave them from the outset: the man was the mastermind of the assault, also having a history of this type of robbery while his girlfriend was carried away. for the airs of grandeur and the life of luxury that he intended.
In this way, the thesis of the defense, represented by the lawyer Sylvia Córdoba, who considered that at most a crime considered as theft occurred, has not been considered by the court. The defendants have been sentenced as perpetrators responsible for a particularly serious crime of robbery in an establishment open to the public, for which they must also jointly and severally indemnify 753,454 euros. This amount comes from the compensation that the insurer Reale Seguros has paid to the owners of Atrio for the disappearance of the bottles, which have not yet been located. Its value on the restaurant's menu, from the sale price to diners, exceeded 1.6 million euros.
As stated in the sentence, it is considered as proven facts that the two defendants, by mutual agreement and with the purpose of obtaining an illegal benefit, decided that the woman should stay at the Atrio de Cáceres hotel on October 26, 2021. , a place they knew about because they had previously been planning the robbery at the restaurant's own facilities up to three times on previous dates: June 1, June 13 and August 12, 2021.
As the workers of the establishment pointed out from the beginning, the reservation was made solely by the woman using a false passport carrying only a backpack "which, when Priscila was taken carelessly by an employee, observed that it had no weight."
According to the account of the facts, Constantin Dumitre later appeared to dine and stay, without registering, at the hotel. After dinner in the restaurant located in the same, they had a guided tour of the winery and then went up to the room. At about 2:10 in the morning, the defendant called the reception, asking for a salad and repeatedly asking how long it would take for it to be served to the only employee who was in the hotel-restaurant at the time.
The reception employee, "after refusing to carry out the order, stating that he was alone and the kitchen closed and surprised by the request, since they had dined a 14-course tasting menu, at the insistence of the defendant he agreed to the request, indicating that it would take at least 20 minutes to serve what was requested". Thus, it was possible to mislead the only worker in the establishment who could be attentive to the entrance and exit of the winery area, which is next to the dining room, and who did not have a camera surveillance system inside it, according to was verified at trial.
In this way, the employee went to the kitchen, a moment that the defendant took advantage of, who appeared at the reception "where he took an electronic key with which he went to the cellar, not being successful in opening it because it was not the proper key." Meanwhile, the employee, after bringing the salad up, returned to reception." The man, from the cellar door, made a call to his sentimental partner to entertain the receptionist again.
Thus, moments later, the defendant repeated the call to reception, this time to request a dessert, to which the employee once again objected, finally agreeing to bring her some fruit.
The sentence continues to detail how the events unfolded. "The defendant returned to the reception and from a box he took the master key number 27, opening the cellar with it, accessing the tasting room where he seized 45 bottles of wine that he kept in a backpack and two large bags going up immediately to the room before the return of the employee to the reception", it is related.
Finally, the defendants hurriedly left the hotel around 5:00 in the morning, "carrying the backpack on his back and the two bags with the bottles, into which he had inserted four towels from the bathroom of the hotel room to prevent them from jingling among themselves, getting into a vehicle, conclude the proven facts of the sentence".
The sentence is not final and against it it is possible to file an appeal before the Civil and Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Extremadura. The lawyer for the defense of the defendants, Sylvia Córdoba, already announced after the trial that if the sentence was against her clients with prison terms, she was going to present said appeal. In addition, on several occasions he has asked them to be released from the Cáceres prison, without success, where they have been since last August, having also remained in prison as soon as they were arrested, in July, on the Croatian border.
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