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A retired business owner from Antequera has been sentenced to five years and five months in prison by the Provincial Court of Malaga after sabotaging ... the vehicle of a sales representative whom he held responsible for the financial ruin of his workshop.
The court convicted the entrepreneur of attempted murder, bodily harm and making threats. His son was handed a prison sentence of one year and three months for participating in a subsequent roadside assault on the same victim.
The legal battle stems from August 2017, when a German multinational supplier began terminating its distribution agreement with the defendant's car repair and machinery business. Although the defendant's daughter had assumed the role of sole director in 2016, the father continued managing daily operations and watched company turnover collapse by nearly 60 per cent.
In October 2017, during a supplier convention held at the Parador de Antequera, the defendant tracked the sales representative's movements via text messages with his daughter. While the victim was attending a business lunch, the entrepreneur entered the car park equipped with an angle grinder fitted with a metal-cutting disc.
The defendant partially severed the track rod near the front right wheel of the victim's new car, intending to cause a fatal collision on the driver's return journey to Marbella.
The sales representative drove home unaware of the damage, but the vehicle began veering erratically the following day along a main road. The driver managed to maintain control and pull onto the hard shoulder without injury. Subsequent technical inspections by mechanics and an independent court-appointed industrial engineer confirmed the steering component had been deliberately cut with a specialised power tool.
Highway ambush and court ruling
Following the formal termination of the distribution agreement in December 2017, the father and son carried out a second, violent attack on 5 March 2018 along the A-92 dual carriageway as the victim drove towards Marbella.
The pair trapped the victim's vehicle using two cars. The son stepped out, smashed the driver's window using a car jack from his boot, punched the victim in the mouth, and pressed an electric shock device against his thigh. The father then approached the vehicle and repeatedly threatened to kill the sales representative and his family if he reported the matter to the police.
The victim suffered facial wounds, upper jaw injuries and trauma, requiring 29 days to recover. Although the sales representative died of natural causes prior to the trial, forensic evidence - including the son's fingerprint on the car frame and the family's car jack recovered inside the vehicle - implicated both men.
Criminal lawyer Alfonso Choza, representing the victim's widow as a private prosecutor, expressed satisfaction with the verdict, praising the National Police homicide unit for its investigation.
The court applied a mitigating factor for excessive judicial delays. In addition to their prison sentences, the father was ordered to pay 10,000 euros in compensation to the victim's widow and heirs for emotional harm. Both defendants were ordered to jointly pay 11,000 euros for physical injuries, lasting cosmetic impairment and moral damages. The ruling is subject to appeal.