Last Monday, the main police officers responsible for security in Barcelona participated in a tense colloquium organized by the Círculo Ecuestre in which the following question was posed: “Is Barcelona a safe city?” The speakers tried to argue that yes, it is, to the outrage of some of the attendees who disbelieved in statistics. At noon this Wednesday, a 25-year-old Canadian tourist died at the Hospital del Mar after falling from one of the walls of the Ronda Litoral at dawn. The Mossos d’ Esquadra are investigating whether he fell or was thrown. For now, the police have found no elements to indicate that he was thrown into the void. The friends who accompanied him and a taxi driver who later declared at the police station assured that a group of about five young people tried to rob them.
The terrible event evidences a reality that no police officer in the Equestrian denied. Things happen in Barcelona. Only in 2022, 193,286 criminal offenses were reported. Half are robberies carried out mostly by groups of repeat offenders who act carelessly. Only in six out of every hundred cases, the thief uses force or violence.
The investigation will determine if the young man believed that by jumping that wall he would get away from the assailants and did not calculate the height, about five meters. Right at exit 23 of the Ronda del Litoral, in Poblenou. Or if, as some unofficial sources claimed at first after the events, he was thrown away by the thieves who robbed him or who tried to rob him. It wasn’t clear last night. In fact, he landed on his head, and not on his feet.
The investigation has been assumed for the moment by the Sant Martí unit. And not the Barcelona region homicide group. That means that, for the moment, the investigators have not found elements that make them suspect that the young man was thrown voluntarily.
The wall is the one that precisely separates one of the exits of the ring road from the coast. It was approximately six in the morning when 112 received the alert call.
Patrols from the Mossos, the Urban Guard and an ambulance from the Sistema d’Emergències Mèdiques (SEM) moved to the place, which managed to stabilize the victim and transfer him in critical condition to the sea. The first information that was disseminated assured that the young man he had severe brain trauma. That he was unconscious, had lost abundant blood, his condition was critical, but that he did not fear for his life.
Unofficial sources assured that the victim had traveled with a group of friends to Barcelona to attend the classic on Sunday at the Camp Nou. The tourist and his companions were around the McDonald’s when, according to those same unofficial interlocutors, they were assaulted by a group of five young people. They tried to rob them and a brawl started in which the group broke up trying to flee from the assailants.
The Mossos have given priority to the investigation. During Wednesday they searched for images in the surroundings. They have the ones from McDonald’s, but they will not be able to use the ones on the Ronda del Litoral because they are devices for viewing, but they do not record the images.
