On Monday, the main police officers responsible for Barcelona’s security took part in a tense discussion organized by the Círculo Ecuestre in which the following question was raised: “Is Barcelona a safe city?”. The speakers tried to argue that yes, it is, to the indignation of some of the attendees who did not believe the statistics. At noon yesterday, a 25-year-old Canadian tourist died in the Hospital del Mar after falling from one of the walls of the Ronda Litoral in the early hours of the morning. The Mossos d’Esquadra are investigating whether he fell or was thrown. As of last night, the police had found no evidence that he was thrown into the void. The friends who accompanied him and also a taxi driver who later testified 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 denied in l’Ecuestre. Things happen in Barcelona. In 2022 alone, 193,286 criminal offenses were reported. Half of them are robberies, the vast majority of which are carried out by groups of repeat offenders acting on distraction. In only six out of a hundred, the thief uses force or violence.
The investigation will determine if the young man believed that perhaps if he jumped that wall he would escape the assailants and did not calculate its height, which is about five meters. Right at exit 23 of the Litoral roundabout, in Poblenou. Or, if, as some unofficial sources initially claimed, it was thrown by thieves who stole it or tried to steal it. It wasn’t clear last night. In fact, he fell on his head and not on his right foot.
The investigation has been undertaken, for the time being, by the Sant Martí unit. And not the group of homicides in the Barcelona region. This means that, for now, the investigators have not found elements that could lead them to suspect that the young man was thrown voluntarily.
The wall is what separates precisely one of the exits of the Coastal roundabout. 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 Medical Emergency Service (EMS) were dispatched to the scene, which managed to stabilize the victim and transfer him to the sea in critical condition. The first information that was disseminated stated that the young man had a severe brain trauma. That he was unconscious, had lost a lot of blood, his condition was critical, but that his life was not feared.
Unofficial sources assured that the victim had traveled with a group of friends to Barcelona to attend Sunday’s classic at Camp Nou. The tourist and his companions were around the McDonald’s when, according to those unofficial interlocutors, they were assaulted by a group of five young people. They tried to rob them and a fight started in which the group broke up trying to escape from the assailants.
The Mossos have given priority to the investigation. During the day yesterday they looked for images in the surroundings. They have the ones from McDonald’s, but they won’t be able to use the ones from the Ronda Litoral because they are devices for viewing, but they don’t record the images.
