Attempted Murder Charge Reduced to Assault in Tenerife Bottle Attack
In Santa Cruz de Tenerife, an attempted murder charge against a man who threw a bottle severely injuring a victim was reduced to assault after it was agreed there was no intent to kill, with a two-year prison sentence and compensation now proposed.
A man appeared in courtroom 11 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, initially facing an attempted murder charge that could have led to ten and a half years in prison. By the end of the hearing, the charge had been significantly reduced to assault. The prosecutor now asked for a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence, but still sought 7,400 euros in compensation for the victim's injuries. He left court awaiting the judge's decision.
His defense lawyer, Miguel Ángel González Hidalgo, agreed with the prosecutor's new proposal, only asking for a slightly shorter sentence of two years, which the prosecutor accepted.
During the trial, held in Section Six, everyone involved – the accused, the victim, and other witnesses – agreed on one key point: the attacker didn't use a broken bottle to deliberately cut the victim's neck. Instead, he threw it from a distance. While the victim suffered severe injuries, including a severed jugular vein, everyone agreed there was no intent to kill.
The incident took place around 4 AM on August 13, 2024, in the Las Verónicas nightlife district of Playa de las Américas. An argument broke out between two groups of young people on Rafael Puig Avenue. It wasn't clear what started the fight or who was responsible. The accused and his two friends claimed the victim and a group of Britons started chasing them. However, the victim said the accused and his friends surrounded and attacked him as he walked alone.
While there were initial disagreements on how the events unfolded, the rest of their accounts largely matched. The accused explained that he and his friends had left a club and were walking when one of them dropped a bottle. He believed this led the other group to confront and chase them, thinking the bottle had been thrown on purpose.
The accused said he ran and hid in a garden. When he saw the other group surrounding one of his friends, he picked up a small beer bottle and threw it at them, hoping to make them leave. The bottle hit one person in the neck, causing a wound over ten centimeters long.
The victim, on the other hand, stated that the accused and his friends surrounded him without explanation. He thought they might have confused him with someone else they had argued with earlier. He also confirmed that the attacker didn't cut him with a bottle but threw it from about one or two meters away.
Two witnesses supported this account, with one even showing how the bottle was thrown. This same witness then chased and restrained the attacker, helping to calm down the nearly 300 people who had gathered and seemed ready to attack him.
The first police officer on the scene testified that if he had arrived any later and hadn't stopped the bleeding from the victim's neck, the man would not have survived.