• Initial action was decisive in identifying the alleged perpetrator of a robbery who was arrested with most of the stolen money in their possession.
• Citizen and police collaboration led to the arrest being carried out less than an hour, before the suspect changed location again in a taxi.
The Guardia Civil on Gran Canaria arrested a 20-year-old man, with no prior police record, last July 13, 2023, for the alleged crime of robbery with violence that occurred on Las Palmeras avenue in the town of Puerto Rico, in the south-west municipality of Mogán.
The events occurred at approximately 08:50 on the morning of July 13, when the Puerto Rico Civil Guard were alerted, by a heavily pregnant woman, that she had just been the victim of a violent robbery, at the hands of a young man on Avenida Las Palmeras.
The alleged perpetrator, she said, approached her from behind and grabbed her by the wrist to throw her to the ground and steal a wallet that she was carrying under her arm, in which she had personal documentation and €210 in notes, and then fled towards the Puerto Rico commercial centre.
Guardia Civil agents immediately attended the scene to help the victim and investigate the alleged attacker’s subsequent location, which was decisive as the physical description given and where he ran to after the robbery led them directly to the suspect.
Civil Guard agents activated a search operation in the vicinity, taking a series of statements from witnesses and passers-by, and local workers, who provided new information about the direction taken by the alleged perpetrator.
The speed of their action and those first inquiries were decisive in finding the suspect, as just 40 minutes later, around 9:30 a.m., the man was located and arrested at the Arguineguín taxi rank just as he was about to catch a taxi, which is how he had traveled from Puerto Rico. Agents seizing a sharp object that he was carrying in his pocket, as well as the amount of €174 divided in the same way the victim had stated hers to have been.
The Guardia Civil have praised the citizen collaboration, as well as collaboration on the part of the local Mogán police, whose information and support in locating the perpetrator were crucial for the suspect’s arrest in less than one hour and before he had changed location for a second time, which would have made it even more difficult to fully clarify the facts of the case.
The detainee has been put at the disposal of the corresponding duty courts of Maspalomas, and the Civil Guard have returned the remaining money to its rightful owner.
