The key to the lethal backpack of the 'Ruso' in Oviedo: he left it on the mailboxes out of the reach of the dog Deny

The fault was the mailboxes, or more specifically the height of the mailboxes. When 'Jota', the sub-inspector of the Canine Guide Unit, his dog Deny and the Tedax agent F.J.G.V. They approached number 2 Rafael Urrusti Street in Oviedo last Wednesday around 8:00 a.m. and saw the bag. It was located above the mailboxes at the property's entrance, next to one of the two exits to the outside from that point.

The three agents, including the dog, were there alerted to the presence of the bundle in the place, and after a completely unusual event in the peaceful city of Oviedo: around 7:30 a.m., even with the light only peeking through the everlasting clouds, a neighbor had shot another's daughter, a 17-year-old girl, five times, and had not killed her by a miracle. The young woman had been quickly evacuated to the Central University Hospital of Asturias, luckily just minutes by car from the place.

The attacker, one of the troublesome residents of a suburban but not excessively degraded neighborhood, had fled in his blue Mercedes van, dressed in a checkered bathrobe - which should speak, in principle, of an attack, although well planned, also a spontaneous point.

And there was the backpack. It has not yet emerged whether the agents were certain that it was Manuel Ferrero Álvarez, the attacker, who had left her there, or whether out of pure protocol, given the seriousness of the previous incident, the Tedax were summoned.

But that's what the agents saw when they arrived at the scene, and when they realized that they had to face, according to investigation sources to which EL MUNDO has had access, a problem as basic as it was unsolvable: the backpack, through whose fabric a suspicious blue light could be seen, was placed high up, above the closet of the building's 14 mailboxes, which prevented Deny, a three-year-old German shepherd, from determining with his sense of smell whether that package actually contained explosive material or was a false alarm.

"It was impossible for the dog to get there, to operate the way it should to mark," explains this source. "For that reason they took the backpack and lowered it to the ground." In a fateful way. The explosion, which released power through both doors of the Rafael Urrusti, 2, portal, and whose sophistication caught the attention of investigators at first glance, took Juan José Rodríguez, Jota, and also Deny, and left his companion Tedax at that moment on the verge of death. Who, hours later, had his leg cut off approximately in the groin to save his life, which he will keep despite having also lost one eye, the left one. «If they don't have to lower it, another rooster would have crowed. The dog would have smelled it and the protocol would have been different," these sources abound.

At this point, the investigation has not yet been able to determine if the detonator of the explosive device had a timer, or was activated by movement, or even - another option being considered - could be activated via mobile phone, and the alleged murderer and now fugitive planned to detonate it through his phone once his victims approached the bundle.

The reality is that the movement of the backpack was what, according to the first hypotheses, caused the explosion of the homemade bomb, and a true massacre that could nevertheless be much worse if the two agents do not make the determination to remove the package from the place: "If it explodes entirely inside, and the shock wave goes upwards, we could be regretting more deaths," explains another police source familiar with what happened. "And not only because of the inhabitants that it could have affected: they saw several pipes of what they thought were gas, and that led them to decide to remove it from there... With the result that we know," they explain.

Was something done wrong in the response to the Oviedo backpack bomb? "Most likely not," continues the previous source linked to the investigation, "but it is true that the context matters, and an explosive device was probably unlikely to occur in that place at that time." Nor did Ferrero Álvarez's antecedents at first glance help to gauge the danger: a dozen cases, but for crimes far from homicide, such as threats, damages, injuries and some theft (the last a few months ago).

However, the profile of El Ruso, as Ferrero Álvarez was known in the Otero area - by his partner, the Russian citizen Tatiana B., who is described as sweet and friendly in contrast to him -, in addition to being constantly conflictive at 64 years old, hid something else. The man, according to sources consulted by EL MUNDO, had been enlisted for a time in the Legion, and not in any group linked to the Legion: specifically the Special Operations Group, the operational elite of that military institution dependent on the Army.

El Ruso, then, was not just a former military man with problems of drug use and conflict in Villafría, the area of ​​Otero where the events took place - the reasons for the attack are still not clear, whether it was a matter of neighborhood animosity or pending accounts for some illicit business. In short, he was a man with great knowledge of handling weapons and setting up explosives, who had just committed what was in principle his first attempted homicide after years of flirting with minor crimes, and from whom, once uncorked that first time, anything could be expected.

The investigation works at full speed to illuminate the many dark angles, but the main one is still on the street: Manuel Ferrero Álvarez does not appear.