João Gouveia, the only defendant, or 'arguido' in the proceedings brought about by the death of six university students in the sea off Meco beach, failed today to turn up at the court in Setúbal.
Joao Miguel Gouveia, also known as Dux, missed the opening day's hearings in the Meco case due to the pressure that he has been under in the past year, according to his lawyer Paula Brum.
The pressure has been increased by the way the parents of the six students who died in the early hours of December 15, last year, have treated Gouveia, also from the Lusophone University, and the complaint from his family is that he has been treated like a criminal.
This morning, three people were heard including an expert from the Institute of Legal Medicine.
The parents of the victims revealed their disappointment at the absence of João Miguel Gouveia, "I wanted to ask him why he took our kids to the beach that night," said Fátima Negrão, the mother of one of the victims, Pedro Negrão, after Gouveia’s father explained to the court the reasons for his son’s absence.
João Gouveia is the only survivor of the tragedy of Meco and has remained as non-committal as legally possible about the events. His father was in court today and regretted the "death threats, public condemnation and persecution" of his child.
The families of the victims said that they had over a hundred questions to ask the survivor but João Gouveia’s father said that "when someone, regardless of the evidence, is already blamed and condemned, there is nothing to talk about," in a justification for the Gouveia family’s decision for João to make no comment.
The students were part of a university pranksters team and had gone to spend a weekend in a house near the beach. There has been no evidence to date that the tragedy was a result of a prank or dare gone wrong, despite this being a likely reason.
The inquiry into the deaths of the young students originally was filed by the Public Prosecutor in the Court of Almada, but the families of the six victims wanted it reopened and successfully petitioned the judge in Setúbal.
The reopened inquiry should have started in November last year but was delayed for technical reasons.
