Court in Spain to quiz five men over Kirsty’s death fall
FIVE men have been placed under formal investigation by a Spanish judge after a Scots hen-party reveller died in a plunge from a hotel balcony.
Amazon worker Joseph Graham, 32, from Nottingham, was the only person facing a court probe following Kirsty Maxwell’s death in Benidorm on April 29.
But judge Ana Isabel Garcia-Galbis decided yesterday to formally investigate his four friends – Ricky Gammon, 31; Anthony Holehouse, 34; Callum Northridge, 27; and Daniel Bailey, 32.
The ruling followed a fight by a lawyer acting for Mrs Maxwell’s family to have them questioned in a Spanish court as ‘investigados’ – a legal term which means ‘under investigation’.
The judge wants to quiz the five men on July 26 at 11am and said she will ask police in the UK if they have criminal records. She will also, on July 13, question the receptionist who works at the apartment block. Both court sessions are set to take place in private behind closed doors.
It means the judge has accepted most of the demands made in a six-page legal document submitted to the court last month by the family’s lawyer, Luis Miguel Zumaquero. The judge’s decision can be appealed by the British men, who have three days following receipt of the notification to do so.
None of the five has been formally accused of any crime, as is customary in Spain where charges are only laid shortly before trial.
Mrs Maxwell, 27, from Livingston, West Lothian, died after falling from the balcony of a tenth-storey apartment.
The Scot, who had been partying with a group of female friends, went to bed about 4am on April 29, in her ninth-floor apartment. Mrs Maxwell woke up, left her flat dressed but barefoot and was let into the men’s apartment on the floor above after knocking on the door.
Mr Graham told police she acted as if she was ‘mad, drunk or drugged’. He insisted he did nothing wrong and was allowed to return to the UK after being questioned by police and a court. His friends were only questioned by police as witnesses.
Police said at the time that Mrs Maxwell may have become disorientated after mistaking their apartment for a friend’s flat.
Yesterday Mr Zumaquero said: ‘There’s a long road ahead but we’ve taken an important first step.’