Early in the morning, when the night was still black, laughter, lively chatter and notes of reggaeton escaped through the open windows of the flat and broke the silence of the Can Serra neighborhood, in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, two streets from Esplugues . A good number of police officers moved there stealthily. The goal? Several of the people gathered at an impromptu party, and who for the past five months have been monitored, followed and listened to as part 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 special intervention group (GEI). They took it upon themselves to pull down the door, gain access to the flat in no time and arrest seven of the dozen party participants. One of the suspects managed to escape and reached the roof, where he was intercepted and arrested. A police drone flying over the building to provide aerial coverage of the operation captured and recorded the escape attempt and capture.
The seven arrested are accused of being part of a criminal group that in recent months had carried out violent assaults on private homes and of a crime of drug trafficking. One of these thefts was explained in detail by La Vanguardia. It happened at the end of December last year in a royal estate on Avinguda Diagonal, a stone’s throw from Plaça Francesc Macià in Barcelona.
It was nine o’clock in the morning when the man, dressed in his uniform of long navy blue robes, came out of the porter’s flat, his apartment, and saw three men, whom he later described as “South Americans”, in the main lobby of the building. Without saying a word, one of them violently pushed him, forced him back into his flat and, pointing a firearm at his head, warned him to be quiet and obey without complaint – if The individual tied the doorman’s hands and did not move from his side for all the minutes (they seemed eternal) that the other two individuals moved around the building.
Directly, the pair of criminals took one of the elevators and headed to the fifth floor. They rang the bell on door number two and the elderly married man who has lived in that house for many years opened the door for them.
The raiders knew exactly what they were going for, where they were going and what they might find there. The victim handed them an envelope with 8,000 euros and other amounts distributed in various rooms of the house until reaching the figure of around 26,000 euros in cash. But the attackers were interested in the safe that the man opened without saying anything and that they emptied of jewelry. In the absence of a more specific assessment that the victims can make of the pieces that were taken, the couple explained to the first patrol of the Mossos d’Esquadra that accessed the home that the amount of the jewelry easily exceeded half a million euros.
The building had no security cameras. Neither the block in their access nor the hall of the fifth floor nor the house where the assailants entered.
The group of violent robberies that took charge prioritized the case because it is not a common occurrence and because of the display of violence with which the assailants acted.
The police obtained a good line of investigation which they prosecuted. They got wiretapping authorization and worked hard for the last few months on a secret case. Last night, the seven arrested, four directly linked to the Diagonal assault, were in the dungeons of Les Corts, while the police had just drawn up the report. They will go to court on Friday.
