Joao Miguel Gouveia, a survivor of the tragedy of Meco beach which killed six students, has been heard as a witness by the prosecution in court in Almada in what has become a homicide case.
Gouveia, a fellow student at Lusophone University, will be key in finding out what happened to cause the deaths of the young students in December 2013.
The six young people who died were part of a group of seven students who had rented a house in the area in which to spend the week-end. According to authorities, a wave swept them off the beach in the early hours of 15th December, but Gouveia survived and raised the alarm.
The families of the six victims have requested that Gouveia was called as a witness and have appealed to him to clarify the circumstances in which the tragedy occurred.
In fact the families have been in advance of the authorities in many aspects of the case and have been able to highlight many of the circumstances that lead them to believe that the deaths were as a result of a student initiation ceremony that went horribly wrong.
One aspect of the case that will have been discussed in court is the allegation that all the students that drowned were without their mobile phones. Gouveira's phone was dry despite his claim that he too had been swept away and managed to struggle back to the shore to raise the alarm.
