Okay, this wasn’t exactly a Righteous Shooting, but the principle is the same:
Maria del Carmen Garcia couldn’t bear the sight of her daughter Veronica’s attacker, Antonio Cosme, after he was freed. At the tender age of 13 in 1998, Veronica suffered a brutal rape at knifepoint by Cosme, their neighbour, who was originally given a nine-year sentence.
However, during a day release in June 2005, the unrepentant predator brazenly confronted Maria at a bus stop close to her home near Alicante. Adding insult to injury, he had the cheek to ask Maria “how her daughter was”.
After Cosme swaggered into a bar her family often visited, Maria, fuelled by anger and terror, bought petrol from a nearby station. In a bid to inflict some form of justice, Maria entered the bar with the fuel, drenched Cosme in it and set him ablaze.
And now the good part:
With burns covering 90 per cent of his body, Cosme didn’t survive and succumbed to his injuries days later in a hospital.
Our Hero Mom’s been jailed, of course, but:
Originally sentenced to nine-and-a-half years’ imprisonment for murder, Maria’s conviction was decreased to five-and-a-half years upon appeal. This sentencing sparked a national outcry in support of the anguished mother, with a groundswell of voices rallying to prevent her imprisonment.
I would have suspended her jail sentence had I been the judge.
The old Texas defense of “He needed killing” is entirely appropriate here.
Here’s the rest of the story:
Back in 2011, after serving one year and 10 days behind bars, the courts placed her sentence on hold pending a pardon application, recognizing “special circumstances”, such as her clean criminal record and her insanity plea at the time of the crime.
Yet Maria’s freedom was short-lived; by 2013 she found herself back in custody when the regional high court in Alicante rejected her attorney’s request to delay imprisonment post-government denial of her partial pardon petition. Come 2017, however, she earned the privilege of daytime leave, setting the stage for her full release the following year.
It’s all old news, but good news nevertheless.
