Mum set fire to daughter’s rapist at bus stop after he taunted her about attack | World | News

A heartbroken mum was sentenced to prison after she set her daughter’s rapist on fire, killing him upon his release from jail. Maria del Carmen Garcia, a Spanish woman, saw her 13 year old daughter Veronica raped at knifepoint by their neighbour Antonio Cosme in 1998.

Despite being sentenced to nine years for the crime, Cosme was out on day release in June 2005 when he encountered Maria at a bus stop near her home outside Alicante.

Unrepentant for his horrific crime, Cosme taunted Maria, asking about her daughter’s wellbeing before entering a local bar frequented by Maria’s family. Overwhelmed with anger, fear and hysteria, Maria purchased a container of fuel from a nearby petrol station.

She walked into the bar where Cosme was, doused him in gasoline and set him ablaze. Cosme suffered burns over 90 per cent of his body and succumbed to his injuries in hospital days later.

Maria was reportedly found wandering around the port on the evening of the killing and confessed. She claimed her intention was to scare or severely injure him, to give him a taste of the pain he inflicted on her daughter, reports the Mirror US.

Maria received a nine-and-a-half-year prison sentence for the killing, which was later reduced to five-and-a-half years on appeal. Her case drew sympathy from across the nation, sparking a massive campaign to keep her out of prison.

Petitions swamped with thousands of signatures, harrowing medical records laid bare her severe depression and anxiety, fervent appeals mounted, even a plea for inclusion on Spain’s Easter clemency list was tabled.

In an unexpected twist in 2011, after clocking one year and 10 days behind bars, a court put through the suspension of her sentence, pending a pardon application; the justification was “special circumstances”, noting she had no prior run-ins with the law and her plea of insanity during her trial.

Despite the reprieve, Maria found herself back in jail in 2013 as the regional high court of Alicante quashed her lawyer’s bid to freeze her jail time following the government’s thumbs-down to her partial pardon appeal. Fast-forward to 2017, Maria secured permissions for daily leave from the prison between 11am and 7pm, setting the stage for her full release the following year.