The Guardia Civil arrested two men, aged 28 and 30, one of whom is Romanian and the other Albanian, in connection with several burglaries on the Costa Tropical. Both men have extensive criminal records.
The detained men are allegedly specialized in carrying out raids on chiringuitos (beach bars). The Seaside Gazette ran a previous article on these burglaries on the Salobreña seafront.
After forcing the metal shutters, the thieves would target the gambling machines and cigarette-vending machines, as well as the tills. Depending on how much time they had available, they would also reportedly go for TV’s, computers, legs of cured ham and bottles of spirits.
The burglaries have been carried out since November last year and have included chiringuitos in Castell de Ferro, Calahonda and Salobreña. Police have not discarded the hypothesis that the two men could also have been involved in burglaries further down the Granada coast, or over in Almería.
It was during the early hours of the 7th of January that the arrests took place: at 03.15h the Guardia Civil received a report from the control room of a private security company who were watching two suspects on their security cameras inside a restaurant in Castell de Ferro.
The Guardia Civil immediately sent out a patrol to intercept them, which had been parked at kilometre point 335 on the N-340, just outside Torrenueva. The police car managed to intercept a Ford Mondeo with two people inside, after the suspects had tried to flee.
Upon searching the car the police found a T-shirt, which was being used as an improved sack, containing a thousand euros in coinage and 400 euros in notes, as well as two ski masks. The money had been taken from machines in the said restaurant in Castell del Ferro.
With the two men already in custody and a search warrant in their possession, the Guardia Civil searched the apartment shared by the two men and found, TV’s, computers, watches, jewelery and high-street brand clothing – all supposedly fruit of previous robberies.
However, what caught their eye was the ‘arsenal’ that the two men possessed, amongst the weapons were three katanas, three blank-firing revolvers, an air pistol, and an assortment of flick knives.
(News: Castell de Ferro, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)