A 27-year-old man who was murdered in the Spanish city of Valladolid during a brawl this week had been the subject of a manhunt by police in connection to the kidnapping and rape of a Ukrainian girl just two weeks prior.
The Spanish national police had been searching for the 27-year-old man, who is said to have carried fake Portuguese identification documents, for 15 days prior to his murder for allegedly kidnapping a Ukrainian woman.
Police say the man, identified by his initials B.L.C., was the victim of a fatal shooting outside a private nightclub that took place late Sunday night into Monday morning when he was shot in the chest by y a 35-year-old in an apparent brawl linked to drugs, El Mundo reports.
Following his death, police were able to identify that the 27-year-old was the suspect they had been searching for in the kidnapping case, and the man is said to have held the Ukrainian woman, who allegedly worked as a prostitute, against her will in an apartment in the town of Burgos.
Officers of the Spanish national police rescued the woman from captivity on Sunday, July 17th and found a “significant amount of drugs” in the apartment. An arrest warrant was then issued for the man on various charges, including sexual abuse and drug trafficking.
The 35-year-old who later shot the 27-year-old was identified using CCTV footage from the nightclub where the brawl and subsequent shooting occurred but is said to have fled the area in his vehicle, which was also positively identified.
Since the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many have warned of Ukrainian women refugees becoming victims of human trafficking, including sex trafficking.
Shirin Tinnesand, refugee and migration coordinator at the NGO Wadi, warned in early March of the vulnerability of refugees saying, “they are at risk of being exposed to human trafficking, prostitution, organ donation. Only imagination sets the limits.”
There have been several reports of Ukrainian refugee women being abused since the start of the conflict in western European countries and other reports of Ukrainians becoming prostitutes, such as in Sweden.