Alex Trelinski
A VALENCIA court has ruled that former porn star Nacho Vidal must stand trial over the death of a photographer in a bizarre ritual involving the drinking of toad venom.
The Provincial Court revoked a lower court decision to dismiss the case involving the death of photographer Jose Luis Abad at Vidal’s Enguera home in 2019.
Nacho Vidal, 50, has always maintained that it was an accident but he will be tried along with two other people that were present during the venom drinking ceremony.
The actor has been charged with reckless homicide following an appeal filed by a lawyer representing the photographer’s brother, Javier Vilarrubí Llorens.
A Xativa judge originally decided not to proceed based on the fact that it was the deceased photographer who had requested to submit to the ceremony of the bufo toad, after he had ingested cocaine.
The new court order takes the view that Nacho Vidal was in charge of the ritual, had a special knowledge about the ceremony, and that it took place in his house.
The Valencia Provincial Court believes that Vidal had the dose that the victim inhaled in a glass pipette, ‘a substance that, despite what he alleges in his defence, was not taken by the deceased, but was taken out by the defendant himself from a drawer of a cabinet in his kitchen’.
The court alleges that Nacho Vidal ‘knew the toxicity of the substance’ and yet ‘did not take any precautions either before or during its administration.’
The indictment states that the actor ‘lacked medical training; ordered the dose to be administered without there being any evidence that he took any measures to measure it or, where appropriate, to determine its purity; and did not carry out any previous study to determine the state of health of Jose Luis Abad’.
The court said no medical help was provided nor did Vidal seek urgent assistance as soon as the photographer lost consciousness.
The indictment stresses that the photographer warned that he had consumed cocaine and despite that, nobody objected to continuing with the ‘ceremony’.
Proceedings continued for several minutes even after Luis Abad lost consciousness.
The court’s indictment concludes that what happened points to a crime against public health and for reckless and non-intentional homicide, because it cannot be affirmed’ that Nacho Vidal considered ‘as very likely’ that the ceremony of the bufo toad could end with the death of the photographer.
READ MORE:
- Court drops charges against Spanish ex-porn star Nacho Vidal for death of photographer during ‘toad venom ritual’
- Spain’s most famous porn star ‘killed photographer with toad poison’ in shamanic ritual gone wrong
- Spain’s biggest porn star files sex abuse claim after ‘doctor felt his genitals to treat an ear infection’
