BANGKOK — A courtroom in Thailand on Thursday discovered Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, a member of a well-known Spanish appearing household, responsible of premeditated homicide and sentenced him to life in jail, in a lurid case that concerned the sufferer being dismembered.
The Koh Samui Provincial Court docket issued an preliminary sentence of dying for Sancho however commuted it to life imprisonment attributable to his cooperation through the trial, stated Police Col. Paisan Sangthep, deputy commander of the Surat Thani Provincial Police, who attended the listening to.
Sancho, a 30-year-old chef with a YouTube channel, had been charged with the homicide of Edwin Arrieta Arteaga, a 44-year-old plastic surgeon from Colombia, when each had been vacationing on the Thai vacation island of Koh Pha-ngan in August final yr.
The island is known for its month-to-month “Full Moon” seaside events, attracting vacationers from world wide for all-night raves.
The convicted man is the son of Rodolfo Sancho Aguirre, a outstanding Spanish actor, and Silvia Bronchalo, who has additionally been in appearing. Each mother and father are 49 years outdated and attended Thursday’s courtroom session.
The courtroom additionally ordered Sancho to pay greater than 4.2 million baht ($125,000) in compensation to the sufferer’s household. Attorneys representing the household on the trial had requested for 30 million baht ($882,000), Spain’s EFE information company reported.
EFE additionally quoted Sancho’s father Rodolfo telling media after the decision that he supposed “to at all times maintain preventing, to maintain preventing.”
At his trial on the island of Samui, Daniel Sancho had claimed he obtained right into a combat with Arrieta for allegedly attempting to sexually assault him. He stated that Arrieta fell as they scuffled and hit his head on a bath, shedding consciousness after which dying.
He had pleaded not responsible to fees of premeditated homicide.
Sancho acknowledged dismembering the sufferer’s physique and disposing of the components on land and at sea. For the cost of concealing or damaging a physique, he acquired a four-month jail sentence, decreased to 2 months for acknowledging the act, stated Paisan.
He had additionally pleaded not responsible to the cost of destroying one other particular person’s paperwork — the sufferer’s passport — for which he acquired a two-year jail time period.
The weather of the case — violent dying on a vacation island, the superstar connections and the lurid particulars — attracted enormous protection in Spanish media. HBO produced a Spanish-language documentary on the occasions.
The case got here to gentle when trash collectors discovered what the Bangkok Publish newspaper described as a sawed-off pelvis and intestines weighing about 5 kilograms (11 kilos) in a fertilizer sack at a rubbish dump.
Shortly after that, Sancho reported to police that Arrieta was lacking, and police then gathered proof linking the 2 males that led them to detain and interrogate him.
Police established a story, claiming to the press that Sancho had confessed to the homicide and saying he had deliberate it as a result of Arrieta threatened to shame him and his household by revealing their alleged sexual relationship.
Sancho, by way of his father and his legal professionals, stated that was a distorted model of what he informed police, and denied having a sexual relationship with Arrieta.
Police obtained surveillance video displaying Sancho allegedly buying a knife, rubber gloves, rubbish baggage and cleansing options at a comfort retailer earlier than Arrieta’s dying, which prosecutors claimed bolstered the cost of premeditated homicide.
In his closing assertion earlier in his trial, Sancho informed the courtroom he regretted his actions, the Spanish newspaper El País reported.
“I’m sorry {that a} life has been misplaced and that oldsters have misplaced a son,” Sancho stated. “I’m sorry that his household was not in a position to bury him correctly. I’m sorry for what I did after the dying.”
Below sure circumstances, Sancho can apply to be repatriated to serve the rest of his jail time period again house after a number of years of incarceration in Thailand, in response to a treaty between Thailand and Spain.
The handful of Spanish nationals in Thai prisons consists of one other man convicted of premeditated homicide and dismembering his sufferer.
Artur Segarra Princep was convicted of the 2016 killing of fellow Spaniard David Bernat. Police suspected that Segarra robbed the sufferer, whom he was stated to have identified. The physique was stored in a freezer in Segarra’s Bangkok condo till components had been tossed into Thailand’s Chao Phraya River.
His 2017 dying sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2020 by Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn.