Mossos d'Esquadra continued the search on Saturday for the perpetrator of the murder of 84-year-old Vilanova de la Barca resident Joan Rosell, who died in the early hours of Friday afternoon after being brutally attacked while picking fruit. On a farm will be a young man who would have acted alone and sought refuge in France, where he fled after stealing the victim's car, a gray Opel Astra. While escaping, he passed a police checkpoint on the C-14 road in Pontes, this newspaper has learned.
It is worth noting that the vehicle was located in Andorra, where it crossed the emirate in about 56 minutes. In fact, the cameras located him at around 12:59 pm at the customs border in Varga de Molise, and around 1:55 pm at the Pas de la Casa border, when the assault had not yet been discovered. The Mossos were not alerted until 2:00 p.m., when a resident of Vilanova de la Barca found her husband seriously injured in a farmhouse from which he had not returned home for lunch. The man went there in the morning to do the pruning. He received several blows to the head and the car disappeared.
It appears that he was attacked with pruning shears when he tried to prevent the criminal from stealing his car. After 4:30 p.m., Andorra police were alerted to the location of the vehicle. Then they tied their heads. It was the car that hours earlier had passed a checkpoint in Pontes at around 12:00, when Vilanova's murder was still unknown. The camera recordings were essential in determining the route the killer took during his escape. When they discovered that he had crossed France, the Moussos family requested, through Interpol, the cooperation of the French gendarmerie.
For its part, the City Council of Vilanova de la Barca yesterday declared three days of mourning, expressed its “dismay” and conveyed its condolences to the family and friends of Joan Rosell. City Mayor Albert Solsona confirmed, “We are still in shock. The victim was very popular in the city.” He was president of Impuls TT, Villanova's table tennis club, and one of the oldest players in Catalonia, where he was still active at the age of 84.
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