{"id":36856,"date":"2023-02-02T07:57:53","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T07:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/?p=36856"},"modified":"2023-02-02T07:57:53","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T07:57:53","slug":"can-a-mass-shooter-demand-a-good-death-the-strange-case-that-tested-the-limits-of-justice-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/02\/can-a-mass-shooter-demand-a-good-death-the-strange-case-that-tested-the-limits-of-justice-spain\/","title":{"rendered":"Can a mass shooter demand a good death? The strange case that tested the limits of justice | Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A<\/span><\/span>t 11.09am on 14 December 2021, a man wearing a black baseball cap and a long auburn wig rang the bell at the Securitas offices in the Spanish city of Tarragona. It was a poor disguise, and when he entered the reception area on the first floor, staff quickly recognised Marin Eugen Sabau, a burly 45-year-old security guard who had been on sick leave for the previous six months.<\/span><\/p>\n

Securitas is one of the world\u2019s biggest security companies, with 345,000 employees worldwide, but this local office was nothing fancy \u2013 grey floor tiles, white laminated furniture, corporate advertising on the walls. \u201cWe help make your world a safer place,\u201d read one slogan. In the cluttered main office, Luisa Rico, a 58-year-old junior manager with cropped silver hair and green eyes, was printing out documents. She recognised Sabau\u2019s voice but was not alarmed that he had dropped by unexpectedly. He sounded calm as he talked to a colleague in the reception area. She did not know he was carrying a pistol, or that he planned to shoot her.<\/p>\n

Over the next few minutes, Sabau\u2019s voice grew louder as an argument broke out. When Rico opened a security door to see what was going on, Sabau was just a few feet from her. He had discarded the wig and was pointing a pistol with a long black silencer into a meeting room. He fired at Jos\u00e9 Manuel Maestro, the company\u2019s provincial manager, who fell to the floor. Then Sabau spun around to face Rico. In the instant before she slammed the door, he pulled the trigger again. \u201cA puff of smoke rose from my sleeve,\u201d Rico recalled. \u201cThe pain was terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Rico stared at her arm in disbelief behind the closed door, another junior manager, Juan Hern\u00e1ndez, tried to wrestle the gun away from the shooter. Sabau shot him in the leg. He let three other Securitas employees go, waving them away with his pistol. Then he looked for Rico. Bleeding heavily, and still wearing her Covid mask, glasses and cream foulard scarf, she had crawled into a nook beside some stacked boxes of copy paper in the main office. The only other person in the room, a clerk named Carmen Bonilla, hid under her desk and called the police.<\/p>\n

A trail of blood gave Rico away. She looked up as Sabau stood over her. \u201cHe smiled,\u201d Rico told me. Then he fired again. The bullet struck her upper thigh, cutting through her bladder and hip. \u201cIt hurt so badly, I actually wished I would die,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n

With that, Sabau was done. He packed his guns and wig into a Securitas carrier bag, placed them inside a sports holdall, and left. As he stepped outside into Plaza Prim, the small public square outside the office, the clock on the building above him showed 11.15am.<\/p>\n

The shooting spree, in a provincial Mediterranean port city of 135,000 people, known mostly for its Roman ruins, in a country with strict gun laws, was almost unimaginable. \u201cI thought only gringos<\/em> did this,\u201d said one of many social media commentators, comparing the incident to gun crime in the US. \u201cYou just don\u2019t think it is going to happen in this country, and certainly not in a city like Tarragona,\u201d Rico said. As startling as Sabau\u2019s crime was, the events that followed were even more extraordinary. Just a few months later, the survivors of Sabau\u2019s attack would find themselves arguing for his life to be saved, while Sabau himself sought his own death, in an unprecedented case that will be cited in courts and ethics classes for years to come.<\/p>\n

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A<\/span><\/span> few minutes after Sabau left the office, Plaza Prim was full of sirens and flashing lights, as ambulances and police cars rushed to the scene. Rico, who was bleeding internally, was taken to the city\u2019s Joan XXIII hospital, where doctors managed to stabilise her. Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s injuries were not life-threatening. Maestro was in a far worse condition, with five bullet wounds in his stomach, hip, neck and shoulder.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just after the shootings, a passerby, hearing screams from the building, had snapped a picture of Sabau\u2019s licence plate as he drove off in a grey Citro\u00ebn Xsara. Within minutes, his name and number plate were circulating on police radios, and soon after on local news websites. On WhatsApp, someone found Sabau\u2019s profile picture \u2013 a photo of him proudly posing in his Securitas uniform \u2013 and stamped \u201cWANTED\u201d on it. It flew from phone to phone, as locals learned of the shooting. Everyone had the same question: what had made Sabau do this?<\/p>\n

An answer of sorts landed in Bonilla\u2019s inbox at 12.47pm, as she was being questioned by police. It was a 3,500-word email from Sabau, with the subject line: \u201cHappy holidays, you thieving, racist bastards!!\u201d It was copied to Securitas bosses across Spain<\/a>, including two of his victims, Maestro and Rico. \u201cI don\u2019t want to kill them,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI\u2019m not crazy. I have it all perfectly planned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sabau had worked for Securitas for more than a decade. As a police officer\u2019s son from the elegant Romanian city of Sibiu, he had been raised to admire order, honesty and slick self-presentation. He avoided alcohol, cigarettes, even coffee. He was a stickler who lived by the rules and expected others to do the same. \u201cOur father taught us that,\u201d his older sister, Eugenia, told me. As a young man Sabau had applied to join the police in Romania, but he was turned down, and in 2003, he emigrated to Spain.<\/p>\n

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\"Eugenia,<\/picture><\/div>
<\/svg><\/span>Eugenia, sister of Eugen Sabau, with her husband, Mugurel Ciocan.<\/span> Photograph: Cristobal Castro\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At first, he worked in unsteady, poorly paid farm jobs. When he was hired by Securitas in 2009, he was overjoyed. As one of the 200 or so Securitas guards who patrol factories, offices, shops and warehouses in Tarragona province, he would be following in his father\u2019s footsteps, upholding law and order. \u201cFor him, it was the greatest company,\u201d Rico said. \u201cHe was very meticulous, and got upset with colleagues who weren\u2019t.\u201d Eugenia also spoke of her brother\u2019s pride in the job. Securitas became part of his identity. He even added its name to his personal email address.<\/p>\n

The email that reached Bonilla came from this address, and showed how far the relationship had soured. \u201cI\u2019m so stressed that I am no longer a person,\u201d Sabau wrote. The company had mistreated him for the past nine years, he said, and it was time to put a stop to it. \u201cLessons learned with blood are not quickly forgotten. Securitas will remember me for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sabau\u2019s relationship with his employers had fallen apart in January 2013, when \u2013 after failing to persuade the company that it owed him money \u2013 he sued Securitas for allegedly cheating him out of \u20ac5,700 in travel and meal allowances, equivalent to half a year\u2019s salary. Sabau won the case, only to lose on appeal. \u201cMy hell started then,\u201d he wrote. From that point on, he embarked on a one-man war against the Swedish multinational. He carefully studied a 72-page agreement signed by security companies and trades unions, which laid out his rights in minute detail. Armed with this information, over the next eight years he lodged seven separate complaints alleging abuse of those rights with government labour inspectors, who enforce Spanish work regulations; but they found no grounds to sanction the company. In turn, Securitas issued at least two formal reprimands against Sabau, mostly to do with his allegedly overbearing attitude to clients. (One of these was later struck out after Sabau challenged it.)<\/p>\n

For Rico, the once-dependable Sabau became a nightmare. \u201cWe could deal with issues like working hours and holidays, but not money,\u201d she told me. That was not within her power. Sabau\u2019s deluge of complaints were pushed up to the company\u2019s regional headquarters in Barcelona. According to Rico, local managers repeatedly told Securitas that they could no longer work with Sabau, but the company did not sack him. Had Securitas done so, it would have been obliged to compensate Sabau with 33 days\u2019 pay for each year worked and admit this was technically an \u201cunjustified dismissal\u201d. \u201cThe company worries about its reputation,\u201d Rico said.<\/p>\n

Sabau stayed, and tension built. When his father died in 2017, Sabau claimed that Securitas refused to give him time off for the funeral. In 2019 and 2020, according to Sabau\u2019s family, doctors twice signed him off work for stress. \u201cI\u2019ve suffered heart problems, memory loss, vomiting, can\u2019t sleep, feel pain in my chest and have passed out several times at home,\u201d he wrote in his email.<\/p>\n

Apart from his job, Sabau had little else in his life. He liked women, but was untrusting, and did not have a partner. He bought two American staffordshire terriers, but had to give them away. \u201cIt broke his heart, but he couldn\u2019t care for them properly,\u201d said Eugenia\u2019s husband, Mugurel Ciocan.<\/p>\n

Sabau\u2019s only release was the shooting range. In 2012, he joined the Jordi Tarrag\u00f3 shooting club, whose dilapidated buildings and pot-holed car park lie off the road to Tarragona\u2019s giant Repsol chemical plant. At the range, Sabau\u2019s conduct was exemplary; he won prizes and offered advice to fellow members. Ever the rules man, his only quarrel came when he accused rivals of cheating when working out their scores. Police officers practised alongside him. No one found him suspicious. \u201cIf we see a Rambo type, they are expelled,\u201d club president Xavier Fau told reporters.<\/p>\n

Sabau was no Rambo, but he was dedicated to his work. On 12 May 2021 he chased a shoplifter at Tarragona\u2019s Wala sports store and tore a tendon. He claimed that the Securitas employee sent to relieve him of his duties did not arrive for three hours, and he then had to drive himself to a doctor. \u201cThey don\u2019t give a shit about my health,\u201d he said in his email. He was placed on sick leave. At first, he needed crutches to walk, and the injury lingered on through the year. \u201cWhen I sit down, it feels like I\u2019m being poked with pins,\u201d he wrote. Cooped up in his apartment in the nearby town of Alcover, he mulled over his battle with Securitas. \u201cHe got into a loop,\u201d Mugurel told me.<\/p>\n

In the summer, Sabau\u2019s landlord gave him notice that he needed the apartment for his ex-wife, and he agreed to move out as soon as he could find somewhere new. The rejections Sabau received as he looked for a new home piled pressure on an overstressed mind. Still, he cleaned the place thoroughly, ready for a handover. Then, on 14 December he left the rented flat before 10.30am, drove to the Securitas office in Tarragona and began shooting.<\/p>\n

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T<\/span><\/span>hat morning, Luisa Rico\u2019s daughter, Jashmina, was working at the medical emergency services\u2019 call centre in Tarragona when she heard about an incident at her mother\u2019s office. The family were terrified. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know if he was coming for us too, or where he was,\u201d said Rico\u2019s husband, Jaime Abrio, a retired bricklayer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Police believe that, after leaving the crime scene, Sabau drove to an out-of-town shopping centre, where he parked and spent 45 minutes finishing his email. Shortly after 1pm, he was spotted driving through Reus, a city five miles inland. Three police officers in an unmarked car stopped him at a roundabout. An officer who knew Sabau from the gun club walked towards his car, with his pistol raised. \u201cThrow away the gun Eugen,\u201d he shouted. Instead, Sabau opened fire, hitting him in the arm. In the ensuing shootout, the police car was struck by three bullets, while Sabau\u2019s car took five rounds before he sped off.<\/p>\n

Sabau swung the car on to a farm track 200 metres away, bumped along for a few minutes and pulled up behind a small shed. A neighbour spotted him ducking into bushes. Snipers took up position 150 metres away on the roof of a three-storey farmhouse. Neat rows of almond and olive trees in surrounding fields provided cover as police closed in. By 3pm, they had Sabau surrounded.<\/p>\n

The events of the next 90 minutes on that bright winter afternoon remain unclear. After calling his phone and getting no answer, police opted against negotiating. They later said that using a megaphone would have given away their location, endangering them. Sabau later said that he was out of ammunition by that point and was lying in bushes in his bulletproof vest, listening to the birds. Police allege that he opened fire as soon as he saw them.<\/p>\n

Whatever the truth, the standoff ended in a fusillade of police bullets at about 4.30pm. According to police, two snipers initially aimed shots at a wall, in an attempt to make Sabau surrender. The police special intervention group then approached on foot, firing at least 36 rounds. \u201cGiven the imminent and grave risk to the agents\u2019 own physical wellbeing and the high stress provoked by the situation, the final shots were aimed towards non-vital parts of the aggressor\u2019s body,\u201d according to a police report. (\u201cThey fired without warning,\u201d Sabau claimed later. \u201cNo one spoke.\u201d)<\/p>\n

When officers reached Sabau, he was unconscious, bleeding from at least three gunshot wounds. A helicopter airlifted him to a hospital in Barcelona, 50 miles to the north-east. \u201cHe has been neutralised,\u201d provincial police chief Josep Mar\u00eda Estela announced to the media. News reports across Spain called Sabau \u201cthe Rambo of Tarragona\u201d and \u201cthe Securitas gunslinger\u201d. Neighbours told reporters he complained incessantly about Securitas, but was otherwise unremarkable and unthreatening.<\/p>\n

It seemed the story was over. Sabau was expected to face trial and receive a long jail sentence \u2013 but only if he survived.<\/p>\n

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I<\/span><\/span>n Barcelona, Sabau was stabilised, sedated and moved early the next day to a second hospital, where doctors were better equipped to deal with such serious injuries. He had lost a lot of blood. A bullet was buried in one of his shoulder blades, and fragments were spread across his shoulder and a leg. He had head and neck fractures, three broken ribs and one of his arms was badly damaged. There was extensive damage to a kidney and to nerves in his spinal cord. A ventilator kept him breathing as he lay in an induced coma.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three weeks later, Sabau recovered consciousness. He was paralysed, and in intense pain. Doctors feared that the wounds on one of his legs might lead to an infection, further endangering his life, but Sabau refused to have an amputation. They called his sister Eugenia, who also lived in Alcover, pleading with her to try to change her brother\u2019s mind. When she arrived, on a chilly day in early January 2022, she found her brother hooked up to tubes and breathing through a hole in his throat. \u201cHe could barely whisper,\u201d she said. Despite her entreaties, Sabau still refused to have his leg amputated.<\/p>\n

From then on, two or three times a week, when Covid restrictions permitted, Eugenia and Mugurel made the 75-minute drive to Barcelona to visit Sabau. \u201cI don\u2019t know what came over me,\u201d he told them, when they asked about the shootings. Eugenia took care of him: she shaved his face and cut his hair. Infections came and went. Operations were performed, inserting pins and plates into arms and shoulders. He finally allowed surgeons to remove his leg on 23 February.<\/p>\n

During these months, the criminal investigation was getting under way. It was overseen by S\u00f2nia Zapater, an experienced magistrate who began work on the day of the crime. In Spain, magistrates like Zapater supervise the investigation, prepare charges and ready the case for trial. At witness hearings, Securitas lawyers appeared intent on protecting the company from any accusations of negligence. \u201cAt times, it seemed as if [Securitas] lawyers were actually prosecuting the employees,\u201d Rico\u2019s outraged lawyer, Rub\u00e9n Vi\u00f1uales, told me. Rico said that the lawyers focused on whether she had pressed the panic button, as if she had not done enough to save herself. \u201cI hadn\u2019t pressed it, because you have to wait for a call-back. It was better to call police,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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\"Luisa<\/picture><\/div>
<\/svg><\/span>Luisa Rico with her husband, Jaime Abrio, pointing to the scar on her arm where she was shot.<\/span> Photograph: Cristobal Castro\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I sent Securitas a detailed list of questions concerning the criticisms of the company by both Sabau and his victims. In response, I received a short statement that addressed few of them. Securitas praised \u201cthe courage of our wounded colleagues\u201d, thanked the healthcare workers who treated them, and claimed that it last received a complaint from Sabau \u201cof the kind that happen occasionally in every work context\u201d in 2017. However, his relatives showed me four complaints sent from his email between April and May 2021. Rico was astounded to hear Securitas had claimed otherwise. She told me that such emails were routinely passed on to senior managers outside Tarragona.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of March, frustrated with their first lawyers, whom she found inefficient, Eugenia hired a brother-and-sister team of criminal defence attorneys in Reus. Gerard and Anna Amig\u00f3 had almost five decades of legal experience between them, but this case was unlike any they had taken before. There was no doubting Sabau\u2019s guilt. CCTV footage from the Securitas office showed him waving a gun, clumsily dropping a silencer, pulling the trigger, jumping over the counter and standing over Luisa Rico to shoot her. But what happened next was murkier.<\/p>\n

The Amig\u00f3s felt that the police\u2019s version of events at the farm did not add up. Why hadn\u2019t they tried to negotiate, or to wait out a man who was surrounded? And while a ballistics report on the shootout at the roundabout, with precise details of shell casings, trajectories and impacts, was presented to Zapater, nothing of the kind was ever produced for the shootout in the field. Sabau\u2019s family claimed that they had seen medical reports showing that he had been shot nine times, not three. Sabau\u2019s protective vest, presumably showing impacts, was missing. \u201cOne officer even said they didn\u2019t know who gave the order to fire,\u201d Gerard said. He could not establish how many police bullets had hit Sabau. Despite these unanswered questions, in April 2022, the special intervention officers were decorated for bravery by their superiors. (The Catalan police declined to comment for this article.)<\/p>\n

That same month, not long after his 46th birthday, Sabau was transferred to the prison wing of a hospital in Terrassa, just north of Barcelona. The medical crises continued. In early June, Eugenia\u2019s phone rang with urgent news. Sabau was in a coma and close to death. Two weeks later, he regained consciousness. Two days after that, the complications started again and a repeat tracheostomy was performed. \u201cFor a week or two he couldn\u2019t talk, or we couldn\u2019t understand,\u201d Mugurel recalled. Eugenia lay awake at night, trying to work out what her brother had been trying to tell her.<\/p>\n

Sabau\u2019s only encounter with criminal investigators was a brief video conference on 11 July. \u201cThe witness says he is a paraplegic, that they have amputated his leg, he has 45 stitches in his hand, cannot move his left arm, has had screws inserted and cannot feel his chest,\u201d the official record stated. Drugs helped, but the pain was constant. Even touching his forearm or cutting his fingernails provoked jolts of pain. \u201cI can\u2019t put up with it much longer,\u201d he told Eugenia.<\/p>\n

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I<\/span><\/span>n 1968, a 25-year-old Spanish sailor called Ram\u00f3n Sampedro dived headfirst off high rocks into water that was too shallow. The accident left him unable to move his limbs, and he spent the rest of his life campaigning for a right to die. Sampedro was relentless, good-natured and a skilful writer. His account of his life<\/a> after the accident, Letters from Hell, became a bestseller and later inspired the Oscar-winning film The Sea Inside<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

On 12 January 1998, when Sampedro sipped some potassium cyanide prepared by his friend Ramona Maneiro, he filmed himself and repeated his call for a euthanasia law. \u201cWhen I drink this, I will have renounced the most humiliating of slaveries: being a live head stuck to a dead body,\u201d he said before taking the poison. Only years later did Maneiro admit to her role in her friend\u2019s death, when the statute of limitations meant she could no longer be prosecuted. \u201cI did it for love,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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\"Ram\u00f3n<\/picture><\/div>
<\/svg><\/span>Ram\u00f3n Sampedro in 1993.<\/span> Photograph: Lavandeira Jr\/AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Discreet, unsanctioned euthanasia, understood as \u201cmercy killing\u201d, has always existed, the Belgian philosopher Willem Lemmens told me, but it often placed doctors who performed it in legal jeopardy. In 2002, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to implement a national euthanasia law. In June 2021, Spain became the fourth country to follow suit, after Belgium, Luxembourg and Canada. According to polls at the time, 87% of Spaniards supported the new law. (New Zealand\u2019s law came into full effect later in 2021, and euthanasia or assisted suicide laws exist for most Australian states. In Germany and Colombia, courts have declared some forms of euthanasia legal according to interpretations of their national constitutions. Switzerland has allowed assisted suicide, where a patient is given the means to end their own life, since 1942. Some US states also allow this for terminally ill people.)<\/p>\n

The new euthanasia laws \u201cdon\u2019t so much give rights to the patients, as to the doctors who perform euthanasia\u201d, Lemmens said. The process is subject to strict oversight, but places great power in medical hands. \u201cThe euthanasia right is really the right that doctors have to perform it without fear of prosecution,\u201d agrees the American bioethicist Scott Kim. \u201cIt\u2019s legally justified as an exception to usual medical practice, in the sense that doctors have an obligation to relieve suffering, but also to prolong life. The Dutch view is that when [those duties] conflict, you can\u2019t blame a doctor if they choose one or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spain\u2019s euthanasia law is so recent that challenges are still going through the constitutional court. In some countries, euthanasia laws cover release from incurable suffering, including psychological pain. Spain is among the most liberal regimes, allowing doctors to end life in order to relieve non-terminal suffering. When the far-right Vox party lodged a challenge on 16 June 2021, party leader Santiago Abascal described the law as \u201ca victory for the cult of death\u201d. More moderate complaints being considered by the court hold that the law is poorly written and \u201copen to abuse\u201d.<\/p>\n

Even critics of the new law had not imagined that a case like that of Sabau would be among the first to provoke public concern about its use. On 20 June 2022, Spain\u2019s biggest radio station broke the news that Sabau had requested euthanasia. As in all such cases, he had to make two written requests, 15 days apart, and await the decision of doctors on whether his condition fitted the law\u2019s concept of \u201cunbearable suffering \u2026 that cannot be acceptably relieved\u201d. His wish was granted, and a date set for 28 July.<\/p>\n

There was, however, an obvious problem. Sabau had shot four people, but no trial had been held. The criminal investigation had been so slow that formal charges had not even been brought. Sabau\u2019s victims, all of whom had survived, were outraged. They felt that if Sabau died before he was put on trial, justice could not be done. \u201cTheir suffering and dignity must be taken into account,\u201d argued Jos\u00e9 Antonio Bitos, the lawyer for the injured police officer.<\/p>\n

In this unprecedented clash, the right of a person experiencing unbearable and irremediable pain to end their own life was pitted against the right of victims to see their attacker face justice. Two decades of legal euthanasia had never generated anything like it. Lemmens told me that in many places euthanasia laws had gone so far beyond the limited way in which they first proposed \u2013 essentially as a means of providing a \u201cgood death\u201d to terminally ill people \u2013 that he was not surprised by the Sabau case, or the outrage it provoked. By avoiding trial, Sabau was, in effect, permitted to opt out of our \u201cmoral community\u201d, he said. \u201cThe idea that someone can choose to step outside that is very threatening.\u201d<\/p>\n

It fell to Zapater to weigh the conflicting demands of Sabau and his victims. In her view, the answer was, from a legal perspective, straightforward. The law defined euthanasia as a medical issue, which meant that she had no legal grounds to override the decision of Sabau and his doctors. In her written response, Zapater recognised that prioritising Sabau\u2019s decision to end his life would inflict \u201cemotional damage\u201d on victims and slow the financial compensation process. (As there would be no trial, the victims would have to start a separate civil process to claim compensation.) Even so, she declared, \u201cIn the conflict of rights, those conferred by the euthanasia law clearly win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet on 20 July, in response to complaints from Rico and other victims, a judge in Tarragona suspended the euthanasia procedure. Rico told me that she wanted to stare into Sabau\u2019s face in court, see him publicly declared guilty and sentenced to punishment. She did not mind if he was euthanased after that, but needed recognition that what Sabau had done to her was wicked and deserved public scorn. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to prevent it. We just want a trial first,\u201d Bitos agreed.<\/p>\n

Rather than defending Sabau, as they had initially expected to do, the Amig\u00f3 siblings found themselves demanding his death. \u201cAfter 25 years, I thought I\u2019d seen it all,\u201d Anna told me as we drove back to Reus in her Mini from Terrassa. \u201cThis is one of those days when you realise you haven\u2019t.\u201d She had just listened to Sabau serenely explain why he wanted to die.<\/p>\n

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\"Lawyers<\/picture><\/div>
<\/svg><\/span>Anna and Gerard Amig\u00f3.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Gerard and Anna Amig\u00f3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In mid-July, Gerard Amig\u00f3 introduced me to Eugenia and Mugurel. They were Sabau\u2019s only support. Eugenia, with her dark hair dyed blonde and an embroidered summer blouse, was tearful. Mugurel, a muscular man with a dense black beard, who is a varnisher and painter by trade, did much of the talking. They were a team, wearing matching wooden crosses on leather strings and occasionally completing each other\u2019s sentences. They were sorry for Sabau\u2019s violence, relieved he had not killed anyone, and angry at Securitas. Above all, Eugenia wanted her brother freed from pain.<\/p>\n

In early August, an appeal court in Tarragona overturned the suspension of the euthanasia procedure. The panel of three judges supported Zapater\u2019s view that \u201cthe right to human dignity [of someone in unbearable pain] \u2026 outweighs the right to judicial care\u201d of victims. Bitos took the challenge to the constitutional tribunal in Madrid, which threw it out on 12 August. It seemed Sabau\u2019s wish would be granted.<\/p>\n

All this came as Catalonia marked the fifth anniversary of terror attacks in which Islamist radicals ran down pedestrians with a van and stabbed people to death on Barcelona\u2019s Ramblas<\/a> boulevard and at the Cambrils beach<\/a> near Tarragona, killing 17 people. In that case, police shot dead six terrorists, some of whom were wearing fake suicide vests (\u201cI\u2019m not stupid like them,\u201d Sabau had said in his email. \u201cIf I do something crazy. I\u2019ll do it properly.\u201d) Reflecting on the implications of the Sabau case in the newspaper Ideal, Claudio Hern\u00e1ndez Cueto, a medical law expert, wrote: \u201cImagine the reaction if one of the Ramblas attackers had been severely wounded and allowed euthanasia.\u201d Would the courts, he wondered, have delivered on their dream of martyrdom? Legally, the answer now seemed to be yes.<\/p>\n

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I<\/span><\/span>n mid-August, as the day of his death approached, Sabau agreed to speak to me on the record. Prison authorities and Zapater intervened, restricting visits to family only and banning recording devices.<\/span><\/p>\n

A week before he was due to die, Gerard Amig\u00f3 asked Zapater to release Sabau on bail. In practice, this meant wheeling his bed down a corridor into a ward without guards, where Eugenia could accompany him. Zapater refused on the improbable grounds that someone might help him escape. Besides, Zapater added, Sabau had not shown public remorse or asked forgiveness of his victims, and seemed unwilling to accept he had done anything wrong. (Eugenia believed he was fully repentant, even if he had not said so in public. \u201cNor has anyone apologised for the things that happened to him,\u201d she added.)<\/p>\n

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\"Mugurel<\/picture><\/div>
<\/svg><\/span>Mugurel and Eugenia with a picture of Eugen.<\/span> Photograph: Cristobal Castro\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Three days before Sabau died, prison authorities relaxed family visiting rules so that either Eugenia or Mugurel could be there day and night. The one who was not with him slept in their Toyota Auris hatchback in the car park. They felt obliged to pretend that nothing tragic was happening. There were tears, but also laughter as Sabau insisted his bad luck had finally turned, that it was a privilege to be able to die and stop suffering. \u201cHe didn\u2019t want to show sadness, for our sake,\u201d Mugurel said.<\/p>\n

On 22 August, with Sabau set to die the following day, Anna Amig\u00f3 and I drove to Terrassa. I was not allowed into the two-storey prison wing, but Anna scribbled down Sabau\u2019s words on a legal pad and he signed it. It was the closest thing to a final testament. Sabau spoke for a long time, Amig\u00f3 said. He repeated his claim that the police had lied about the shootout by the farm. He said he felt most regret about shooting Hern\u00e1ndez, the man who tackled him. He cried only once, when asked about dying. \u201cWhat future do I have? I can\u2019t describe the pain,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, Sabau was remarkably upbeat, insisting death was a welcome release. He had recently learned that he could donate his organs. As macabre as it sounds, organ donations from those dying from euthanasia are ideal, since the task of prepping patients and delivering organs in good, fresh condition is made easier. By dying, he would be saving lives. That felt virtuous. \u201cI\u2019m a good man,\u201d Sabau told Amig\u00f3. \u201cI\u2019m ready. I\u2019m very happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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O<\/span><\/span>n the morning of 23 August, a clutch of journalists, myself included, gathered at the 12-storey concrete hospital in the rolling countryside outside Terrassa. By then, the case had become international news. As I waited in the hospital cafeteria, I listened to the lawyers from both sides being interviewed on the radio, as news stations covered the final stage of this long-running drama. During one interview, Gerard Amig\u00f3 floated the idea of suing police for shooting Sabau. I called Bitos. \u201cIf that is what they want, they should stop him from dying right now,\u201d he snorted. The case would be shelved after Sabau\u2019s death, he explained. There was no other suspect to investigate. It seemed that the questions around the police\u2019s handling of the incident would be shelved, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eugenia and Mugurel spent the morning with Sabau as hospital staff bustled around. Again, he insisted on maintaining a happy, even jokey, disposition. \u201cCome on, let\u2019s go!\u201d Sabau urged the doctors. They tried to match his mood, but Mugurel\u2019s account suggested there was a surreal, forced edge to it all. At 2.30pm, doctors told Eugenia and Mugurel that it was time. They said goodbye, held back tears and watched as the sedative was delivered. A holdup in the complex set of medical procedures necessary when euthanasia is combined with organ donation meant it wasn\u2019t until four hours later that Mugurel returned to watch, alongside doctors, nurses and police in medical gowns, as the lethal drug was applied. Later that evening, Anna Amig\u00f3 called me to say Sabau had died at 6.30pm. Ambulances stood nearby, waiting to transport some of Sabau\u2019s organs to operating theatres with prepped recipients in other hospitals. Eugenia and Mugurel waited into the night as his body was removed by an undertaker, smartened up for an open casket ceremony and then taken to the crematorium to be incinerated two days later. At 11pm, a doctor phoned to tell them the transplants had been a success. \u201cThey said he had saved five lives, and there would be more, that we could feel proud,\u201d Eugenia said.<\/p>\n

When I visited Eugenia and Mugurel in Alcover three weeks later, they were struggling to make sense of it all. \u201cWe were concentrating so hard on the fight to end his pain that we hadn\u2019t thought what it would be like. In a way, it was a victory, but it\u2019s also the loss of a loved one,\u201d Mugurel said. We sat in the living room of their bright, tidy apartment in Alcover and watched a video Sabau had left behind. Eugenia served sponge cake and juice as her brother\u2019s face appeared on the screen. He sat at a table with his short dark hair slicked neatly to one side, wearing a grey Securitas zip-up fleece and a fluorescent orange vest with a badge saying \u201cSecurity Guard\u201d. Over 18 minutes, he delivered the now-familiar narrative of persecution, larded with paranoia. Eugenia sighed. \u201cFor big companies, workers are just numbers,\u201d she said. \u201cSomeone should have listened. There were many cries for help.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Eugenia<\/picture><\/div>
<\/svg><\/span>Eugenia holding a pendant filled with her brother\u2019s ashes.<\/span> Photograph: Cristobal Castro\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She and her husband did not condone her brother\u2019s violence, but remembered a man \u201cwith a huge heart\u201d. His ashes sat in a brushed metal urn on their bookshelf. They had bought hollow necklace pendants to fill with ash. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to whitewash his reputation,\u201d Mugurel said. \u201cEverybody knows the facts.\u201d They just wanted people to know Sabau was not always like this, that something had happened to him.<\/p>\n

A few days earlier, I had visited Luisa Rico at a Mediterranean beach campsite south of Tarragona, where she was trying to recover from injury and trauma. After the initial operations to stem internal bleeding, stitch up her bladder and fix hip bones, Rico still walked with a crutch and was awaiting further surgery to pin her hips into place. Her boss, Maestro, had suffered a stroke and now has serious heart and kidney problems, while also struggling with acute anxiety. The other two victims were recovering from lesser wounds. Bitos was not sure the police officer would ever return to active duty.<\/p>\n

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Before the attack, Rico had been fearless, said her husband, Jaime. Now her self-confidence was shattered. Small things would trigger her: the sound of cars passing by, people shouting in the street, the sight of her scars, or just someone coming up close behind her. She constantly replays the moment when Sabau stood over her with his gun. \u201cI thought I wasn\u2019t going to escape, that he would kill me. I couldn\u2019t do anything at all,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

There are bad days and less bad days. The day Sabau died was one of the worst. \u201cWe all know that when you break the law, there is reaction and punishment. All we wanted was justice, to see him declared guilty,\u201d she said. \u201cYou try to do everything right in life, then someone suddenly decides to destroy your life. He has stopped suffering, but we are still suffering.\u201d She still sees his face in the shadows, she told me, her eyes filling with tears. His death had not changed that. \u201cIt feels like he\u2019s got off completely free.\u201d<\/p>\n

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