The 14-year-old arrested on suspicion of having fatally shot his mother – a PSD councillor in Vagos – at the family home on Tuesday has been ‘interned under closed regime in an educational centre’ for the next three months.

The decision was made after his first interrogation at Aveiro’s Family and Minors Court.

Speaking to Lusa, Carla Delgado, the lawyer representing the boy, said that the court had ordered the internment for a period of three months, which will be reviewed in two months’ time – and could be extended up to a period of six months.

PJ police have already described “strong evidence of a crime of aggravated murder” – but according to today’s newspapers, there is still no real understanding of what led to this appalling scenario.

“He appeared to be a normal 14-year-old boy. There is no history of violence, nor of episodes in which he mistreated his mother”, writes Correio da Manhã today, which adds that due to the youngster’s age, he will be tried according to the educational guardianship law, for which the maximum sentence possible would be three years internment in a closed-regime educational centre.

“At the age of 17, he would be a free young man”, says CM, suggesting the minor confessed to the crime after investigators started probing inconsistencies in his account to them.

According to the paper – and all other reports – the boy allegedly shot his mother while she was on the telephone (in conversation, in other words). He used his father’s gun – a 6.35 calibre pistol, legally registered, which was kept in a safe. According to authorities, the boy memorised the combination to the safe.

After the shooting, he is understood to have covered his mother’s body; left the house – only to return some short time after and stage a break-in.

“The ‘misfortune’ of the boy was that the details did not add up. His mobile phone switched off minutes after he left the house – and the front door had not been forced, which led the PJ to realise that whoever entered had a key,” writes CM.

The paper claims that when he confessed, the youngster said that his mother had been ‘very demanding’. According to commentator and former PJ police inspector Carlos Anjos, the boy referred to his mother as having been “annoying”.

With the municipality declaring three days of mourning, and neighbours expressing their complete shock that something like this could have happened (“he always seemed like such a quiet, well-educated boy”), Anjos refers to worrying tendencies installed in society these days, “with very little being done to combat them.

“Between 2022 and 2024, the number of parents attacked by their children has been increasing”, he writes in an opinion column. “There were 815 attacks (in 2022), 962 the following year, and 1,036 in 2024. Mothers are always the principal victims (…) It would be good if political decision-makers looked at this reality, and accepted and took rapid measures to combat it, or else borderline cases like this will increase”.