A teenage boy has been arrested for allegedly shooting and killing his own step-father in an effort to protect his mother and siblings.
The grisly family drama unfolded in the early hours of Sunday morning in an Estepona squat house on Camino Vereda de los Frailes in the La Lobilla neighbourhood.
Two of the five children heard a commotion around 5am and reportedly came in to the room to see their step-father stabbing their pregnant mother in the chest with scissors.
According to the mother, who is three months pregnant, a struggle ensued between the four of them, until the 17-year-old son went to fetch a shotgun.
She told Area Costa del Sol: “He came to stab me – my whole chest is full of stab wounds from him.
“He took the scissors from the nightstand and went to stab me. He got me on the floor and I was defending myself when my two children came in.”
The youngsters tried to protect their mother, who pleaded for the 17-year-old to let go.
When he did but then returned with a shotgun, the struggle carried on until the step-father, 35, was fatally shot at close range in the neck.
The family claim that it was they who called the police and ambulance in the aftermath of the shooting, contradicting earlier reporters that neighbours had raised the alarm.
Emergency services arrived and pronounced the step-father dead at the scene, and both mother and son were arrested.
The mother, who has five children in total, did not deny the deed but protested that it was carried out in self-defence, after two long years of suffering violent abuse and threats to kill from her husband.
“I have been enduring severe abuse and awful threats for two years,” she said.
“Psychologically he drove me crazy. He told me that he was going to torture me to death and dump my boy somewhere.
“Or that, if I tried to leave him, he would kill my children. He would beat me in front of my children.”
A neighbour also said that the family lived in an environment of constant threats from the stepfather.
They alleged he would arrive home in the early hours drunk and under the influence of narcotics, leaving the car in the middle of the road.
He had also allegedly served time in jail for stabbing another partner in the hand.
The mother also claimed that he liked to shoot his gun into the ceiling and force the family to smell the bullets, declaring that he ‘loved’ gunpowder.
A judge has ordered the teenager to be put in a juvenile detention centre under therapeutic incarceration, the highest penalty that can be imposed on a minor.
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