At dawn, still dark, laughter, lively talk and reggaeton notes escaped through the open windows of the apartment and broke the silence of the Can Serra neighborhood, in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, two streets from Esplugues. Up to there a good number of mossos d’esquadra moved stealthily. Aim? Several of the people gathered at an impromptu party, and who in the last five months have been watched, followed and listened to in the framework of a judicial investigation carried out by the violent robbery group of the criminal investigation area of ​​the Mossos de Barcelona.
The dangerousness of the suspects advised the presence of the Grup Especial d’Intervenció (GEI). They were in charge of breaking down the door, accessing the apartment in a jiffy and arresting seven of the dozen party participants. One of the suspects managed to slip away and made it to the roof, where he was intercepted and arrested. A police drone that was flying over the building to provide air cover for the operation captured and recorded the escape attempt and the capture.
The seven detainees are accused of being part of a criminal group that in recent months had carried out violent assaults on private homes and a crime of drug trafficking. One of those robberies was told in detail by La Vanguardia. It happened at the end of December of last year in a royal estate on Avenida de la Diagonal, four steps from Plaza Francesc Macià in Barcelona.
It was nine in the morning when the man, dressed in his uniform with a long navy blue robe, was leaving the doorman’s apartment, his home, when he saw three men, who he later described as “South Americans”, in the main lobby of the building. . Without saying a word, one of them pushed him violently, forcing him to go back into his apartment, and pointing a firearm at his head, warned him to be quiet and to obey without question. The individual handcuffed the doorman and did not move from his side for all the minutes (it seemed like forever) that the other two individuals moved through the building.
With a fixed shot, the criminal couple took one of the elevators and went to the fifth floor. They rang the bell at door number two and the man from the older couple who has lived in that house for many years opened the door for them.
Threatened at all times with a firearm, the robbery proceeded quickly and without anyone suffering personal injury. The raiders knew perfectly well what they were going for, where they were going, and what they might find. The victim gave them an envelope with 8,000 euros and other amounts distributed in various rooms of the house until reaching the figure of about 26,000 euros in cash. But the interest of the assailants was the safe that the man opened without saying a word and that they emptied of jewelry. In the absence of a more specific assessment that the victims can make of the pieces that they took, the couple told the first patrol of the Mossos d’Esquadra that accessed the house that the amount of the jewels calmly exceeded half a million euros. .
The building did not have security cameras. Neither the block in its access, nor the lobby on the fifth floor, nor the house to which the assailants entered.
A lack of images that played against the researchers. The group of violent robberies that took charge prioritized the case because it is not a regular event and because of the display of violence with which the assailants acted.
The policemen achieved a good line of investigation that they prosecuted. They obtained authorization to carry out wiretapping and have worked intensively in recent months on a secret cause. Last night, the seven detainees, four directly linked to the Diagonal assault, remained in the cells of Les Corts, while the policemen finished writing the report. On Friday they will go to court.
