A 54-year-old resident of Poblenou has been hospitalized since Tuesday afternoon after receiving a beating when he tried to recover the mobile phone that a thief had just taken from him at the entrance to the parking lot of his house. The victim is in critical condition and his prognosis is not good. The Barcelona Mossos d’Esquadra homicide group has given absolute priority to the investigation. The police have the collaboration of the district investigation groups and the furas who usually pursue this type of opportunistic phone thieves who do not avoid responding with violence if the situation becomes complicated, as on this occasion.
The terrible event occurred on Tuesday at half past six in the afternoon when the man was preparing to enter the parking lot of his home building. Still inside the vehicle, and with the window open while waiting for the access door to open, an individual on a bicycle stood at his level, reached inside the car and snatched the iPhone 12 that the victim had on his hands. legs.
The man’s reaction was instantaneous. With a swerve of the wheel, he accelerated his old Mercedes and chased the thief. He soon caught up to him at five meters, got out of the car and pounced on the criminal, whom he knocked to the ground. In fact, the victim’s vehicle was left in gear and collided with a building.
The victim had little room to react although some witnesses consulted by La Vanguardia and who even recorded part of the attack with their phones, told how the victim began to hit the thief, who did not take long to react by hitting him and knocking him to the ground. Once on the ground, the man that the police are now looking for continued hitting the victim with punches and some kicks directly to the head. The scene was witnessed by users of the coworking that is on the ground floor of the building and who in the last two days have avoided making statements, visibly upset with the situation and the presence of the media.
With the man lying on the ground, the criminal dropped the phone and fled the scene on the same bicycle on which he had arrived. A peaceful and pedestrian space of the many that exist in this section of the Sant Martí district.
Several witnesses called 112 and several citizen security patrols from the Mossos d’Esquadra of Sant Martí, who have their police station relatively close, approached the scene.
The man was still conscious when the police arrived, and was being attended to by neighbors and passersby. One of them assured La Vanguardia that he saw the man with his face beginning to turn red from the beatings. The victim was still able to detail to the police what the first moments of the robbery were like, but he immediately began to feel unwell and commented that he did not remember what had happened after the kick.
An ambulance from the Servei d’Emergències Mèdiques transported the victim to the Hospital del Mar. At dawn, those responsible for the emergency department already warned the investigators that the patient’s situation had worsened and that he had been transferred to the critical intensive care unit. and that his prognosis was not good at all.
At that moment, the investigation passed into the hands of the homicide group of the Barcelona Mossos, which has taken charge of the case, a priority at the moment. The police spent all Wednesday taking statements from witnesses and collecting images from the various security cameras of the surrounding establishments. Among them, the images of the two recording devices that for security are installed in the lobby and in the parking lot of the building where the victim lived with her mother since the block opened, ten years ago.
The man had been retired from work for some time, after suffering a motorcycle accident that left him with serious consequences. He had worked all his life in the military arms industry sector. He does not have children nor was he currently in any romantic relationship. A gun lover, he is a member and regular at the Sabadell sports shooting club.
