Violent mob horrifically beat a gay man to death in the street. They're going away for decades.

Two of the defendants found guilty of the murder of Samuel Luiz in Spain awaiting sentencing

Three men who attacked and killed a 24-year-old gay man in Spain in 2021 — inspiring massive demonstrations across the country — were handed lengthy prison sentences on Wednesday.

The judge cited the lead defendants’ “absolute lack of empathy and cruelty” as she imposed sentencing.

Diego Montaña, Alejandro Freire, and Kaio Amaral were sentenced to 24 years, 20 years, and 20 years and six months for their respective roles in the murder. A fourth man, Alejandro Míguez, was handed a 10-year sentence for complicity in the killing.

The four men were found guilty in a highly-watched trial in A Coruña, where the murder took place, in November.

Samuel Luiz, a 24-year-old nursing assistant, was out with friends in the Galician city in the early hours of Saturday, July 3, 2021, when an argument started outside a nightclub.

Luiz was standing with two friends and speaking on his phone when two men walking by demanded he stop recording them. Luiz and his friends tried to explain he was on a video call, but one of the passersby responded, “Either stop recording or I’ll kill you, f*g.”

One of the men then started beating Luiz.

“The video was blocked, but the audio kept playing and I did not know what exactly was happening,” Luiz’s friend Vanesa, who had been on the other end of the video call, told El Mundo after the attack. “I only heard the blows and Lina yelling: ‘Leave him, he’s my friend, please leave him!’”

Eventually, the man left. Luiz was badly bruised, but conscious.

But soon after, the man returned with at least a dozen more people, who together beat Luiz to death.

“I saw in the distance that a crowd of people were moving at high speed and I ran towards it. I heard someone yell ‘you f**king f*g!’” Luiz’s companion Lina said. “When I arrived, I found Samuel on the ground unconscious, they were gone, they had left him lying there and had run away.”

Luiz later died in the hospital.

Police described the murder as a “pack of humans kicking a youngster for more than 150 meters down a street.”

“The man tried to escape on a number of occasions,” police said. “He fell and got up as many as three times, he managed to cross the street, but they caught up with him again and carried on beating him.” Several more bystanders cheered the assault on, they said.

The murder ignited outrage across Spain, with large demonstrations demanding “Justicia para Samuel” and government action in the face of a wave of homophobia gripping the country. On the same day Luiz was killed, two gay men were attacked in the Spanish city of València.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called Luiz’s murder “a savage and ruthless act” and declared the country “will not take a step back in rights and freedoms. Spain will not tolerate it.”

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Originally published here.