Ricardo Sáenz de Ynestrillas Martínez

Description

At 2.30 pm on 17 June 1986, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Infantry Carlos Vesteiro Pérez was on his way home for lunch. He was travelling in an official car with Major Ricardo Sáenz de Ynestrillas and the driver, Private Francisco Casillas. As the car was approaching Major Saenz de Ynestrillas’s home at No. 38 Avenida de Manzanares, two ETA members who had waiting there, pretending to be a courting couple, machine-gunned the vehicle from either side. One of the terrorists then approached the vehicle and inserting his arm into one of the windows, fired further shots at the occupants, who were already fatally injured.

Maria Sanchez, who witnessed the attack, later recounted, “I immediately ran to the vehicle, because I am a nurse and I thought I might be able to provide assistance. Two of the occupants were dead. A third, who was in the back seat, on the right side, was still clinging to life. A young man came running up. ‘That’s my father,’ said the boy, who was Sáenz de Ynestrillas’s son.”

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