On the 19th of March a man, who was later arrested, was driving on the A-44 with his young son where it passes through the municipality of Peligros.

A Guardia Patrol on check-point duty flagged him down but instead of stopping he shot off, nearly knocking over a police officer in the process.

The police set off in pursuit. After a few moments the car stopped and a child got out of the car before the driver sped off again. It was a ploy to shake off the police because they had no other option than to stop and pick up the minor owing to the danger to pedestrians on an autovía, especially a child.

This tactic gave the driver enough time to put a distance between himself and his pursuers and find an exit from the autovía and lose himself in the streets of Peligros.

One Guardia patrol vehicle picked up the child and kept him until his mother was able to come to pick the boy up whilst another one tried to find the suspect on the autovía, not knowing that he had already left it.

It didn’t take much investigation to verify the identity of the driver and his abode, however it wasn’t that easy to actually lay hands on him; they had to stake out  his house for several weeks before he tried to sneak back to it.

The reason that the driver tried to escape was not only because he had broken the Lock-Down norms but also because he didn’t have a driving licence nor had ever possessed one.

He has been charged with: dangerous driving, abandoning a minor and driving without a valid licence.

Editorial comment: considering the number of people that are run over and killed on an autovía after their car breaks down, it is mind boggling that a father would leave his young son on the hard shoulder just to buy time to make his escape… a futile one because the identity of the minor would automatically lead to his own.

(News: Peligros, Vega, Granada, Andalucia)