“You wanted to escape and we’ll take the edge off” (knife). “We had an encounter and you end up bleeding.” The video shows David Barcena, 18 years old, accused of the murder of young Isaac López, in Madrid, singing and dancing with a group of gang members. They define themselves as Villablack Music (alluding to the Madrid neighborhood of Villaverde, where they boast of having their territory). Bárcena and his friends appear making killing gestures with their fingers and showing symbols of the Dominican Don’t Play (DDP), the Latino gang to which they could belong, according to national police reports incorporated into the case.
Bárcena and three minors are being investigated for murdering Isaac López, an 18-year-old rap fan with a 48 percent disability, in a Madrid tunnel on July 14. Bárcena, who is in prison awaiting trial, confessed to the crime before the police, although he later retracted it before the judge. The three minors are in detention centers.
At least two of the detainees for Isaac’s crime participate in a handful of videos made before and after the murder that have been accessed by CASO ABIERTO, the investigation and events channel of Prensa Ibérica. In them they defend violence and DDP, the youth gang that Isaac never wanted to join and the possible reason he was killed.
On a scooter, stabbed
The recording, titled “Lo Vamo a Hace,” was made, according to sources in the case, weeks after Bárcena and three other gang members chased on scooters and stabbed and kicked to death to Isaac López, a young rapper nicknamed Little Kinky who had even made some satires about violent gangs in his compositions.
In that video, incorporated into the investigation, several young people are seen, among whom Bárcena and a minor interned for the crime are the protagonists, riding a scooter, entering the Embajadores metro station, making several times the gesture of shoot camera, the one to “machete” another person and the three-finger signal that identifies DDPs.
“Ready to kill yourself”
“We have soldiers ready to kill you,” is heard in that video. The investigation tries to demonstrate that the four implicated in Isaac’s crime are members or aspiring to enter a Choir (group) of the DDP in the neighborhood of Villaverde. In fact, one of the minors investigated for the crime, aged 17, appears as one of the possible Supremes (leaders) of the group. The recording expressly mentions that minor and “Barce” together with a third young man known as The wall. This young man, of Moroccan origin, identified in police reports, is not implicated in Isaac’s crime, but sources in the case affirm that he would have participated in another assault on the rapper, three months earlier, in the neighborhood of Legazpi.
Other videos being analyzed by the police predate Isaac’s murder, but may prove the accused’s membership in the DDP and their advocacy of violence. In them, David Bárcena is seen taking the lead, talking about the choir, mentioning D3 (Dominican Don’t Play): “We all come out in black hooded, don’t play with me, I’ve already shown it.” They end by saying: “This is D3, Fuck the straw” (alluding to the Trinitarios, the rival gang). The videos were recorded
a girl in the band
In another recording, Bárcena is seen together with another of those accused of the crime. “I always prepare myself to give machetes,” they sing, while showing the Dominican flag, black bandanas (headscarves) and other symbols of the DDP. This time in violent song a girl also participates, something rare in Latin bands.
The videos, four of them contributed by Juan Manuel Medina, Isaac’s family lawyer and another three in the hands of CASE OPEN, can prove that Bárcena and the minors are part of the DDP, a violent gang of Dominican origin. Bárcena, the only one who admitted to the police being the author of the murder, although he later retracted it before the judge, is from Madrid and of Spanish parents. The other three investigated, all minors, are Spanish of Honduran and Argentine origin.
Medina insists on the importance of the videos to “prove that Bárcena and some of the minors belong to the DDP, a criminal organization. If we can prove that, we can even request harsher sentences, including reviewable permanent prison for the older one. We believe that the motivation for the crime is that Isaac did not want to be a member of that gang and that is why they went for him & rdquor ;.