Teenager shoots girlfriend dead

4 May 2004

TARRAGONA – A teenager shot dead his 15-year-old girlfriend then turned the gun on himself Tuesday.

The 18-year-old turned a shotgun on his girlfriend in his own house after a row about their relationship.

The boy’s mother found the two bodies in the garage of the house in the village of Mas de Barberans near Tarragaona, in Catalonia, north-east Spain.

The horrified mother called police.

Police sources told EFE news agency that the couple had been going out for some years and had known each other since they were children.

This brings the number of women killed in domestic violence to 20 this year.

Four of these murders have happened in the past seven days.

The double-killing has shocked the small village of only 700 inhabitants, where they were both well-known.

Friends at the Instituto de Educación Secundaria Santa Bárbara de Mas de Barberans where the couple went to school were Tuesday also left stunned by the tragedy.

The college director Rafael Roig Montagut said everyone was “shocked”.

“Today everyone at the college is crying,” he added.

Roig said the girl was “very pleasant and open to the whole world” though he added that she “wasn’t brilliant at her studies”.

The 18-year-old had left the collage two years ago and wanted to find work.

“He was a normal teenager of his age. He was never aggressive,” he said.

Roig could not explain why the teenager would have killed his girlfriend.

“I cannot believe that he could have killed his girlfriend and then committed suicide, he said.

“They were the typical teenage couple who went out everywhere together.”

Roig said there had been rumours that the parents of the girl did not agree with the relationship.

Classmates of both teenagers did not want to talk about the tragedy.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

    Subject: Spanish news