A Spanish court on Tuesday sentenced a 60-year-old man to ten years in prison for homicide who had pushed a minor he met online to whom he had sent a hundred messages on WhatsApp to suicide.
The minor, aged 17, committed suicide on December 1, 2016 in the Castellón region, in eastern Spain, by throwing himself from his apartment in the interior patio of his building.
According to the judicial authorities of the region, he would have been harassed by the accused through WhatsApp messages. The first messages were of a sexual nature and alluded to a previous conversation.
On the day of his death, the sexagenarian had “sent him more than 119 messages with intimidating and threatening content in less than three hours,” they report in a press release.
“Aware of the anguish and discomfort”
The teenager then asked his interlocutor to stop, telling him “that he was a minor” and warning him “that if he continued like this he was going to commit suicide,” adds the press release.
According to the judgment of the Castellón court, of which AFP obtained a copy, the accused was “fully aware of the anguish and discomfort” of the adolescent and of the “high probability” that he would commit suicide.
Despite this, he continued to send her messages, which quickly took on an aggressive tone, the court said.
The 60-year-old threatened to “publish” their earlier “conversation” and sue him for accessing an adult site when he was underage.
In addition to his prison sentence, the defendant – who has the possibility of appeal – was sentenced to pay 173,000 euros in damages to the parents and brother of the deceased for non-material damage.
Source: BFM TV
