A police manhunt was underway on Friday after a shootout in a rural community left two women dead and two critically injured.
The violence broke out in the middle of the afternoon on Thursday.
According to residents, it was a tragedy waiting to happen.
The aggressor, a man with a history of domestic violence, had been pursuing his former partner since their divorce five years ago.
Manuel Pinto Baltazar had threatened to kill both his ex-wife and the relatives that protected her “innumerous times”, said neighbours – and despite being fitted with an electronic bracelet wired to alert security forces if he violated a restraining order, he managed to take advantage of the time-delay involved before police arrived at the scene to carry out his massacre and make his escape.
Twenty-four hours after shooting his former mother-in-law and one of his ex-wife’s aunts, Baltazar was still on the run.
Meantime, his former partner was reported to be recovering in hospital in Viseu, while the condition of his daughter is thought to be much worse.
According to Público newspaper, the 30-year-old was hit full in the chest and required airlifting to Coimbra University Hospital for critical life-saving surgery.
Surgeon António José Bernardes told Público: “The operation went well. The patient is recovering from the anesthetic in a stable condition and breathing on her own”.
As the net tightens around her father, family friends and neighbours told reporters how the man had always said he would kill his former partner and the relatives that protected her, and then commit suicide.
“She even fled to one of those places that take in victims of domestic violence”, a neighbour told Público. “But he always ended up finding her”. Thus, two years ago, the 52-year-old woman had decided to return to her family home, to live with her elderly mother, wrote Público.
This is just another desperate incident in a country that is rapidly becoming a blackspot for domestic violence.
In our edition of April 1, we carried the news that domestic violence is now considered Portugal’s “most worrying” type of crime, with as many as three women losing their lives every month.
