An amateur British boxer who used to train at a gym linked to Irish crime boss Daniel Kinahan is due to go on trial today on the Costa del Sol for the brutal ‘road rage’ murder of a Spanish teenager.
Lewis Harry Briggs (24) faces being jailed for up to 23 years if convicted of stabbing Ulrich Perez (19) in the heart and changing the number plates on his rented Mercedes after the killing.
Nine jurors are set to decide the British man’s fate at a court in Malaga.
Personal trainer Briggs was arrested in the UK after a five-week manhunt before being extradited to Spain.
Public prosecutors are demanding a 16-year prison sentence – 14 if he is found guilty of killing Ulrich outside his home near Marbella on November 18th, 2020, as he ran an errand for his mum and another for stealing the number plates of a neighbour’s Audi he allegedly put on his Mercedes to throw police off the scent.
Lawyers hired by Ulrich’s family, who will also prosecute him in the same court case, want him jailed for a total of 23 years.
The fatal stabbing is said to have occurred after the Spanish youngster recriminated Briggs for driving too fast before braking sharply at a zebra crossing he was on as he returned home with washing powder his mum had asked him to buy.
Anguished Tatiana found him lying bloodied in the road after being alerted by a neighbour something had happened to her son and rushing out into the street to find it swarming with police and an ambulance arriving.
The lawyers the stab victim’s family hired say Briggs returned and went looking for him after initially driving away from the zebra crossing before assaulting him with his feet and fists and then stabbing him in the heart.
In a pre-trial indictment lodged with the court they said: “First he gave him a professional kick, abusing his physical condition and his knowledge of boxing, a fighting technique he is a personal trainer of, to avoid his victim defending himself.”
Alleging Briggs then punched his victim several times, leaving him badly wounded and unable to counter the ‘surprise attack’ they added in the written document: “He finally opened the knife he had prepared, and with the precise and accurate blow of one who knows how to cause death, he stabbed him directly in the heart.”
The separate three-page public prosecution indictment, made public in April last year after Briggs was charged, said of the crime that led to Ulrich’s death: “After a struggle with the victim, with the intention of ending his life, we allege the accused kicked him in the chest and stabbed him in the chest before fleeing.
“As a result of the brutal aggression, the victim died from an injury caused by a single stab wound to the chest which penetrated his heart and caused massive external haemorrhaging according to the autopsy.”
Briggs, 21 at the time of the incident, was identified in Spain as a boxer from a well-settled family in Marbella around the time of his arrest.
He is said to have boxed often at the MGM gym, which has now closed after being rebranded as the MTK Marbella gym, but welcomed stars like Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua and was closely linked to alleged cartel leader Daniel Kinahan who is currently holed up in Dubai.
The murdered teenager’s great aunt Herminia Martinez took to Facebook after the brutal crime to say: “At times we feel as if God has abandoned us and we ask why the Lord took you or you want to have that person who hurt your son or your daughter in front of you to ask them why they did what they did and committed such cruelty.
“I imagine that when that happens we also want to die with our son or daughter, because the pain must be so great that we don’t think about anything else. You can’t believe what’s happening. We think it’s a nightmare.
“A mad man, a stupid man snatched your life away from you and you are in another dimension with your great-grandparents who loved you so much. Rest in peace.”
In a local newspaper interview last year Ulrich’s heartbroken mum recalled the chilling moment she saw her son after the attack.
Saying she initially thought he had been knocked over by a car, Nicaraguan-born Tatiana told Diario Sur: “No one would tell me anything. I was screaming for an ambulance. Then I saw that he didn't have his glasses on and I knew something was very wrong.
“The ambulance came, they cut off his clothes and I saw the wound on his side. You lose your mind. Who did that to my son, who was a very nice boy, who said hello to everyone? Who goes out in the street in Spain with a knife? A murderer who crossed his path.”
As well as a lengthy prison sentence Briggs is also facing five-figure compensation demands.
He was arrested on the outskirts of Leeds in West Yorkshire in December 2020 following what lawyers acting for his alleged victim’s family have described as a ‘conscious and premeditated’ plan to flee Spain and fly to the UK via Portugal.
The British expat was remanded in custody in Spain following his extradition at the start of 2021 but released on bail after two years behind bars without ever going to trial, despite protests from Ulrich’s parents, who wanted him kept in jail on remand.
