Two defendants who, in the summer of 2022, perpetrated violent assaults near bars on Rua das Fontes were sentenced today in the Funchal court (Edifício 2000) to short but effective prison sentences. Judge Teresa de Sousa, who presided over the panel, noted that “fights have always existed at night, but now it involves stabbings, and some people end up dying” as a result of such assaults. Because “society is afraid,” “the court cannot send the wrong signal” and apply suspended sentences.
The defendant who committed the most serious crime is a construction worker, born and residing in Funchal, who was only 20 years old at the time of the events. He has no criminal record and awaited trial while free. He has now been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for attempted murder. The court found it proven that, at 3:35 am on July 17, 2022, near Rua das Fontes, this defendant stabbed an immigrant from Kazakhstan in the abdomen with a military-type knife with an 8-centimeter blade. The victim suffered four other stab wounds to other parts of the body, but it could not be proven that the defendant inflicted them. The Kazakh immigrant “only by sheer chance” did not lose his life, having been taken to Dr. Nélio Mendonça Hospital, where he remained hospitalized for nine days.
The second crime occurred in the early morning of July 21, 2022, in the same area of the city. In front of one of the bars, a young man, a resident of the Santo Amaro neighborhood, who was 18 years old at the time, allegedly got into an altercation with another man from Madeira. He brandished a sharp object, which appeared to be a box cutter, and inflicted two cuts on the victim’s back, who had to be treated at the hospital. The perpetrator of this assault was today sentenced to two years in prison, with an effective sentence, for the crime of assault, but benefited from a one-year pardon thanks to the law approved during Pope Francis’ visit to Portugal. While awaiting this trial, he committed other crimes and is currently in Cancela prison.