The 16-year-old girl who allegedly stabbed her sister, three years older, to death in August last year, in the house where she lived with her father, in the Fonte Boa neighborhood, in Peniche, has now been accused by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the crimes of qualified homicide and desecration of a corpse.
The girl, who confessed to inspectors from the Criminal Investigation Department of Leiria of the Judiciary Police and during the first judicial interrogation, to have killed Lara Pereira, awaits the development of the judicial process in preventive detention in the Tires prison, as “the dangers serious disturbance of public order and tranquility and continuation of criminal activity”.
It was an act committed on August 15, 2023, following an argument in which the minor, in a moment of anger, became angry with her sister for having reprimanded her for exchanging messages of a sexual nature on Whatsapp and left in possession of your cell phone.
Since the father was dependent on alcohol and had suffered three strokes in recent times and was weakened, with difficulty speaking and walking, it was the older sister who took on a supervisory position over the younger one, monitoring and trying to repress sexual and romantic contacts via the Internet.
“For a futile reason, using a bladed weapon, he inflicted a number of undetermined stab wounds, causing the death of his sister”, who even tried to escape inside the house but was hit in different parts of her body, the Judiciary Police said last year. “A tragedy resulted from a small argument”, said the director of the Leiria Criminal Investigation Department of the Judiciary Police, Avelino Lima.
Despite describing that “the murder weapon is a perfectly common household knife, he revealed that “it was not located”.
Lara Pereira’s body was dragged to the room where they both slept and hidden under the younger girl’s bed for three days, before wrapping it in a sheet and transporting it under cover of night, in a wheelbarrow, to the sandy wasteland. approximately 130 meters away, at the back of the house.
He dug a shallow hole where he placed the corpse and covered the grave, which would have been hidden if it hadn’t been for the efforts of the police authorities to determine the details of the young woman’s disappearance.
According to Avelino Lima, given all the evidence collected, “there is no suspicion of anyone else being involved”. The disproportion in size between the two young women (the victim is a dwarf) made it possible for the younger one to have, alone, killed and buried Lara Pereira.
The attacker washed the inside of the house to hide clues, placed her cell phone card in the device that belonged to her sister and when her father asked her if he had seen her, he replied that she had gone to an ex-boyfriend in the area. Lisbon, which concealed for a few days what had really happened.
The disappearance was reported to the police authorities on August 18 and became public days later when other family members – a cousin and the mother, who is separated from her father and does not live in the same house – sent out appeals on social media.
On September 8, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Peniche requested the Judiciary Police to carry out investigations, which were carried out in Peniche, Caldas da Rainha and in the Greater Lisbon area, eluding the information obtained from the experiences of the young woman reported missing and who indicted that the area of the residence was where the answers would be.
This is how, on September 13th, “several investigative steps were taken from the beginning of the morning with immediate family members, as well as the carrying out of various examinations and examinations by the Crime Scene Team of the Scientific Police Laboratory of the Judiciary Police, The result was unequivocal that a violent death had occurred at the missing woman’s home”, reported this police authority.
The younger sister’s behavior during the examinations at home raised suspicions about her involvement in the case. At one point, traces of blood were observed on the mattress of the suspect’s bed, who, faced with the situation, ended up admitting responsibility for the crime and revealing the location of the missing woman’s body. The corpse was found late in the afternoon and the sister of the murdered young woman was arrested.
The detainee will answer for qualified homicide, for the perversity and manner in which it was committed (punished between 12 and 25 years in prison) and desecration of a corpse (punished for up to two years). At trial, the minor, who is attributable because she is already 16 years old, may eventually benefit from a penal regime for young adult delinquents (16 to 21 years old), if the court does not see serious reasons demonstrated to believe that the special mitigation does not bring advantages for the young woman’s social reintegration. However, he will never show regret for the act committed.
The unusual crime shocked the population of Peniche, but according to the testimonies of people who knew the family, the relationship between the sisters was conflictual, with constant disagreements. However, the discussions would not go beyond the limits and were not seen as abnormal, according to the Judiciary Police.
The family had already been flagged by the Peniche Commission for the Protection of Children and Young People, as they were “in need of support”, particularly due to their fragile financial situation and extremely poor living conditions.
