Marin Eugen Sabau attacked his colleagues at a security company in the northeastern city of Tarragona in December 2021, before hiding in a house and having a shootout with police. During the gunfight, the 46-year-old man, who injured one of the officers, was shot in the spine, leaving him partially paralyzed. “I’m a paraplegic,” Sabau said in his plea for euthanasia. “I can’t move my left arm very well. I’m wearing screws and I can’t feel my chest,” she added. Under a Spanish law introduced last June, adults with “serious or incurable” illnesses that cause “unbearable suffering” can choose to be euthanized. Sabau’s death on Tuesday was a disappointment to his victims, who tried unsuccessfully to have his euthanasia postponed until his sentencing. “It was not about preventing euthanasia, but we wanted the victims to have a fair trial,” their lawyer Jose Natonio Bitos said, according to Spanish newspaper El País. A Spanish court rejected their request, saying it had no right to interfere with Sabau’s request for euthanasia. In the first year of the new law, at least 172 people died by euthanasia.
