A young thief ended up in ICU over the weekend after swallowing the gold chain and medal he had stolen from a 72-year-old woman. The Basauri Local Police, where the events occurred, had arrested this man shortly after the woman reported the events and they noticed that he was coughing recurrently. This led them to believe that he had swallowed the loot to avoid the legal consequences of the robbery. After a first medical examination, the thief ended up being transferred to the Basurto hospital, in the Biscayan capital, in a medicalized ambulance and escorted by a police patrol.
The events occurred this weekend on a walk in Basauri, a town adjacent to Bilbao. A woman who was walking with her dog suffered a violent pull on the chain she was carrying by a young man.
The alleged offender ran away, while the woman called the local police. The victim of the robbery was treated in a few minutes and transferred to a health center, where she was discharged after being explored. In parallel, the Local Police began the search for the thief, who had been accurately described by the woman. He was arrested in a few minutes, while he was running, and also recognized by the woman herself.
The young man, 18 years old and of unknown address, was arrested for robbery with violence. The Local Police searched the surroundings for the chain and the medal that he had stolen, although the search was unsuccessful. The agents, however, noticed that the offender would not stop coughing, which led them to suspect that he could have ingested the loot.
The Local Police agents requested a court order for a medical inspection, which was granted by the guard judge. The young man was transferred to the ICU of the nearby Galdakao hospital, where some tests were carried out that confirmed the suspicions of the agents: the young man had swallowed the chain and the medal. The diagnosis, however, was worrisome, since they had remained lodged in the trachea, something that compromised his life. The loot had to be extracted urgently.
The medical team chose to send the young man to the Basurto hospital, in Bilbao, for the extraction of the jewels. The medical service managed to extract the medal and the chain, for which he was discharged and transferred to the cells of the Basauri Local Police, where the appropriate procedures were carried out to make him available to the duty court.
