Aljezur: Murder suspect arrested

The Judicial Police (PJ) announced that a suspect of having killed a young girl in December 2014 in Aljezur, in the Algarve, was arrested on Tuesday in Romania, under a European arrest warrant.

In a statement, the PJ indicated that the man, 35 years of age, "is strongly indicted for the murder of his stepdaughter, a girl, aged 16, a crime that took place in December 2014 in Aljezur, in a context of extreme physical violence, and the suspect concealed the body in order to destroy evidence and begun to flee."

The suspect was arrested by the Romanian authorities under a European arrest warrant issued by the prosecutor of Lagos, following the investigation carried out by the Criminal Investigation Department of Portimão of the PJ.

"Mechanisms for judicial cooperation and international police were triggered and contacts developed between the Judicial Police and the Romanian police, which led to the arrest of the suspect in Romania," reads the statement.

The man, a Romanian national, is the alleged perpetrator of the death of Bruna Nunes, aged 16, whose body was found three days after her disappearance, with her hands tied and signs of strangulation in a vacant lot in the Old Village, in the municipality of Aljezur, Algarve. The detainee, who lived with the girl's mother, in the parish of Rogil, in that Algarvian county, left the house two days after the teenager's disappearance, who was studying in Lagos and was a skate athlete.

The detainee will be presented to the Romanian judicial authorities concerning his delivery to Portugal.