Macarena Díaz, the mother of Antonio David Barroso, the 15-year-old minor who died while traveling by car from her city, Morón de la Frontera (Seville), to Santiago de Compostela (A Coruña), will not go to prison. This is clear from the decision of the investigating judge of the city of Seville to return the case to court, three years after the events, accusing the woman only of reckless homicide.
As ABC reported on September 9, the prosecution will request that the total exemption for mental illness be applied to the accused, so that she does not go to prison for the four years that our Penal Code sets as a limit for this crime. The accusatory principle practically establishes that the Provincial Court can only sentence in accordance with the maximum sentence requested by the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Macarena could enter a psychiatric center (she has been there for two months after killing the child), if the prosecutor requests it and the jury confirms it. As for the private prosecution, represented by the father and ex-partner of the Sevillian, Antonio Barroso, it will request the maximum sentence for murder: 20 years in prison.
The judge thus closes an erratic three-year investigation that passed through the hands of four men. He considers that Macarena is guilty of the death of Antonio David because during the weeks preceding September 12, 2021, he did not give him the medication he needed. Until now, she was accused of the disappearance of the teenager.
There is a report sent by the Ufam Central of the National Police in which three hypotheses are established about what happened to the little boy. The first is that the minor died on September 12 in Morón, due to an illness or heat stroke. Another is that he lost his life at the Perales home, in Talavera de la Reina (Toledo), where the mother and son stayed for four hours before resuming the journey to Madrid.
But there is a third theory, which is the one that researchers give the greatest plausibility: that Antonio David died on the way and they point out as the most likely point the municipality of Miajadas (Cáceres), crossed by the southwest highway (A-5). This is where the so-called Ruta de la Plata, the A-66, connects, along which they traveled north, from Seville to Extremadura.
The sources consulted indicate that “it was terribly hot that day.” Macarena stopped and left the van open for a few minutes while he filled up at a gas station. He must have realized at that moment that the little boy had died en route, otherwise he could have suffered from heatstroke.
The researchers point out in the report that, to make matters worse, the woman had not given the teenager any treatment for a long time. In fact, it was proven that the last purchase of medication was made weeks before, in her town. Hence the charge now of reckless homicide.
She herself also did not take her medication for her bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, which she had been diagnosed with, until at least the summer. In a conversation with ABC last year, he admitted that he stopped doing so before the summer “because he was gaining weight.”
So where is David? The police carried out countless searches along a very wide route, from Seville to Riaza (Segovia), where Macarena, now childless, tried to spend the night of September 13, without finding a place to stay. In the morning, the Civil Guard found her disoriented at the Carabias gas station and told her that the child had died. What he said was that he had thrown the body into a container and the articulated chair in which David was in another (his disability prevented him from moving, but he also did not speak or have practically any other senses).
Time difference in Aluche
He first indicated this near the Xanadú shopping center, along Arroyomolinos and near the descending lane of the A-5, where he was seen at 2:08 a.m. But there is no trace of it on the cameras. In the reconstructions she witnessed, it was concluded that she did it later, in Aluche, specifically on Illescas Street, 1. A cashier at the Caixa de Padre Piquer sees the vehicle at 2:11 a.m. In addition, this newspaper learns that the police have managed to locate both the truck that collected the waste that day and the specific containers.
Traffic cameras in the area record Macarena’s car passing, but then there is a 14-minute delay when it is filmed again through the M-30 tunnels, heading north, at 2:25 a.m. Every conceivable speed calculation has been made. They estimate that this parenthesis is the time it took to get rid of the miner and the chair he was carrying him in.
Valdemingómez Landfill
Ufam Central then requested the cessation of the waste corresponding to these dates in the Valdemingómez (Villa de Vallecas) and Pinto landfills. The court authorized the investigations on site, but this diligence did not produce the expected results either. But here we come to a key element: the researchers point out, as has been said, that the death could have occurred in Miajadas; but also because Antonio David most likely ended up in the Valdemingómez landfill.
The police did not have enough time between requesting the search of the premises and preventing the waste treatment corresponding to that day. Between two and three days passed. Since it was raining in Madrid, the waste treatment was brought forward, which worked against him. That is where the boy would have ended up. Macarena’s initial version (he later changed it several times), the one that still shocks him, is therefore probably the most faithful to reality. In Riaza, he got rid of his documents, like his transport ticket.
Macarena Díaz, now 42, had to take care of her son, who is 91% disabled due to West syndrome. A few days before the escape, the boy had convulsions in a supermarket and she said that everything was fine with him. That’s how she was caught by the chambers of commerce. Lately, these episodes were reaching 20 or 30 a day. The National Police of Morón, two months before, was present at the house and informed the municipal services of the lack of care and attention given to the minor. But those who should have acted at that time did not, and the tragedy was consummated.
Exorcisms and miracles
The mother had become a religious fanatic, she talked about exorcisms, resuscitation of the child and asked for a second medical opinion, but she did not like what the doctor told her. In his delirium, he decided to take her to Santiago de Compostela so that the Saint could heal him. She got rid of all the furniture in Morón’s house and before leaving for Galicia, she threw her cell phones into a container, which allowed her to travel without the possibility of geolocation. Something that was planned as an explosion and whose true motivation will never be known.
After filling up in Miajadas, he entered the Talavera Hotel at 8:30 p.m.: the employee saw the child “as if he were sleeping”. He was covered with a blanket that he had just bought in a bazaar and had put on a mask, uselessly. But what he was carrying was already a corpse and he spent four hours with it, until midnight, when he decided to resume the journey to Madrid and get rid of it.
