An Irish woman and her partner who were found dead by their own young children in a Spanish holiday villa may have been victims of a freak "chain-reaction accident", according to reports. The children, who found their parents dead in a hot tub, are being comforted by loved ones who arrived in Cullera, near Valencia, overnight.
Discovery at rented villa
The children discovered their lifeless parents after searching the hilltop villa "room by room". The upmarket rented home, one of three properties at the top of the Cap Blanc residential estate marketed online as "the perfect setting for romantic retreats, family getaways or gatherings with friends", has several floors. The children are said to have called out to their parents from various floors without getting any response after leaving the upper floor where they had been initially, before deciding to go through every room looking for them. The hot tub where they found their parents dead is on the lowest floor.
They called the owner of the property after making the horror discovery, and the owner then alerted police.
Investigation and possible cause
A police homicide unit is leading the ongoing probe and a local judge has now placed a secrecy order over the case as officers probe whether the couple died accidentally or a crime occurred. There have been unconfirmed reports they could have been victims of a freak "chain-reaction accident" in which one lost their life trying to save the other. Sources close to the ongoing probe have confirmed there were no sign of forced entry to the villa and nothing suspicious on CCTV cameras outside the property. There are no indications the dead couple's children were aware of any problems before they discovered their bodies and raised the alarm.
Civil Guard investigators are understood to be considering the possibility one of the parents suffered a serious health problem in the water and the other died during a rescue attempt, leaving small "puncture wounds" discovered on at least one of the bodies. Local paper Las Provincias reported: "The initial examination of the bodies at the chalet, before they were collected by the undertakers, revealed that one of the victims had scratches and small puncture wounds. Officers found slight traces of biological material and blood around the jacuzzi that match these injuries. However, far from pointing to the involvement of an assailant, the main line of investigation is considering a chilling hypothesis: a chain-reaction accident."
Consular assistance and ongoing probe
The results of the autopsies, thought to have been carried out yesterday at Valencia's Institute of Forensic Medicine, will be sent directly to an investigating judge at a court in Sueca near Cullera, who is unlikely to make them public due to the secrecy order. These orders are tools commonly used in Spain to protect judicial probes especially in their infancy, and limit the amount of information civil servants can give out.
A woman who regularly holidays in a property next to the Colina del Sol complex told Spanish daily El Pais: "Until the police and an ambulance arrived early on Tuesday afternoon, we hadn't heard anything. My grandchildren were here and they make a lot of noise. My son, who is a nurse, went over to ask if he could help with anything, but they told him: 'There's nothing to be done'."
A spokesman for the Civil Guard in Valencia said this morning he had no updates to offer at this stage. He also confirmed his information was still that both the 45-year-old woman and her 50-year-old partner were Irish, despite the Department of Foreign Affairs saying it was providing consular assistance in the case of only one Irish citizen.
