Los Cristianos beach in Tenerife, yards from the dreadful incident
The homeless Bulgarian who decapitated a British woman in Tenerife yesterday thought he was ‘a prophet of God’ it emerged today.
Local mayor José Reverón said the 28-year-old man was a bizarre individual who was known to police and had a history of intimidating passers-by on the street for yesterday’s horrifying attack.
Deyan Valentinov was reportedly released from a psychiatric hospital in February and had a history of violent behaviour before brutally killing the 62-year-old Briton in a shopping centre in Los Cristianos yesterday.
He was reportedly admitted to the psychiatric unit after knocking a stranger’s teeth out on the street. Mayor Reverón said the incident was ‘the most horrific crime to hit the resort in recent years’, questions were raised about why Spanish authorities had allowed the attacker to wander the streets
Canary Islands political representative Dominica Fernandez was quoted by the news site as saying that the alleged killer was disturbed and had ‘chosen his victim by chance’.
The man, who had a previous record for causing bodily injury, struck at 10:30 am local time in the supermarket, which forms part of the Valdes Centre shopping center of Arona, police said.
Other news reports said the man had been in a psychiatric hospital for knocking out a man’s two front teeth in a random street attack and had only been released in February but this could not immediately be confirmed.
Witnesses of the attack said the Bulgarian man stabbed the British woman a number of time before cutting off her head without uttering a word.
Police said a homeless Bulgarian man, with a criminal record, had been arrested on suspicion of murder. He had been sleeping rough in a semi-derelict house
Los Cristianos is located in the heart of the most popular tourist region of Tenerife, in the Canary Island’s south, just 15km from the airport.
Considered the quieter sibling of nearby party resort Playa de las Américas, the town has long been a favourite amongst older British holidaymakers and ex-pats. The first tourists arrived in Los Cristianos in the 1950s, attracted to the resort’s promise of year-round sunshine – average temperatures hover around 22 degrees – and two sandy beaches.
The town has a population of around 19,000 (Tenerife’s total population is around 800,000). Around two million British tourists holiday in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands every year, with around 80 per cent of that figure made up of returning visitors.
Once one of southern Tenerife’s most important ports, Los Cristianos has been subject to sprawling development in recent decades as the town has become increasingly popular among European tourists.
This is a very unfortunate case, it could have happened anywhere and to anyone. Millions of British tourists flock to Los Cristianos every year but this is understood to be the first attack of its kind on a holidaymaker in the area. Our thoughts are with the family of the deceased at this tragic time.
