"How a quiet boy turned into a ruthless killer"/ Daily Mail article about Ruben Saraiva

2026-03-29 19:52:00, Kronika CNA

"How a quiet boy turned into a ruthless killer"/ Daily Mail article

The British media outlet "Daily Mail" has dedicated another article to the Portuguese, Ruben Saraiva, the person who executed Ardian Nikulaj in broad daylight in his bar in Shëngjin.

The prestigious British newspaper begins the article with the murder that shocked Lezha and beyond, a murder committed in the wake of a blood feud between two Albanian families, which has lasted almost three decades and has already claimed nine lives.

“On a spring lunchtime in 2023, a man dressed as a pizza delivery man walked into a five-star hotel in an Albanian seaside resort, said good morning to the owner who was sitting drinking coffee and shot him six times at close range with a Soviet-made automatic pistol. The cold-blooded killing, which was filmed by security cameras, was the seventh in a three-decade blood feud between two families in the Balkan country. But for the first time, this blood feud was a British-led operation. The gunman, Ruben Saraiva, grew up in the quiet suburbs of London and was allegedly assisted by a four-member British hit squad who acted as his surveillance team ,” the article said.

The Daily Mail continued with the description of the Portuguese's life, writing that Ruben Saraiva went from a quiet boy to a hired killer for an Albanian crime family in England. His two parents expressed surprise at what their son had done.

"Saraiva is the son of Portuguese parents, a former footballer father and a nurse mother. Both are described as kind and hard-working people, who are said to be shocked by what happened to their son. One of the family sources told the Daily Mail: 'We are good people, we are not criminals. Ruben is like that too. We were stunned.

Saraiva moved from Portugal to the UK with his father when he was four years old. When his mother came to the UK four years later, he split his time between his father, who lived in the suburbs of Reading, Berkshire, and his mother, who settled in Lewisham, southeast London.

Photos of Saraiva in his youth show him dressed in a suit and tie. He was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. He didn't go out on the streets as a young child, as his mother wouldn't let him. Saraiva told the Mail newspaper that he had a normal upbringing and that it consisted mainly of playing football and going to school.

Photo published by Daily Mail

In his late teens, he surprised his mother by going to live with his full-time father and stepmother in Reading, where he attended college and worked in a Tesco warehouse. It was also where his life took a dark turn.

Photo published by Daily Mail

At the age of 17, he and another man were caught selling more than £600 worth of cocaine and heroin in nearby Wokingham. He received a suspended sentence at Reading Crown Court in 2013 and then returned to live with his mother. At first, everything went well, and he took courses in construction and electrical engineering and started an apprenticeship.

But he quickly got back into trouble after stabbing a 17-year-old boy during a knife fight. He was jailed for several years after being convicted of wounding with intent, and they believe it was while he was behind bars that he had his first contact with the Albanian underworld,” the British media article says, among other things.

Saraiva had flown from London to Albania two months before the April 2023 attack. Amid tight security measures at the Lezha Court, the judge decided to sentence Saraiva to life imprisonment. /CNA