The Guardia Civil, within the framework of the Artabas operation, arrested four people for robbing two octogenarian residents of a house in Oriñón-Castro Urdiales with extreme violence, where the criminals obtained a loot of about 30,000 euro in cash and jewellery, including other valuable items. These people resided in Bizkaia, where they were arrested after searches at their homes.
The events occurred on March 2 when four men assaulted a house in this Cantabrian town where an 82-year-old woman and her 87-year-old older brother resided.
The elderly man was violently beaten by the assailants on the ground floor of the house, with blows to the head and having to be evacuated to a hospital due to the seriousness of the injuries he had. As a consequence, he had to be admitted and intervened urgently.
During the attack, one of the perpetrators of the robbery took his 82-year-old sister handcuffed to the first floor of the house where she was ordered to tell them where she kept the money.
The officers in charge of the investigation managed to find out that the perpetrators of the robbery, for several days prior to the events, had been monitoring the house in order to obtain data on the customs of its inhabitants.
As a result of the inquiries carried out to clarify the fact, it was possible to find out the identity of the person who would have led the robbery, this being the one who had marked the target house, as well as chosen the rest of the collaborators to carry out the robbery.
The perpetrators carried out the robbery by initiating surveillance of the house, finding the moment to access it discreetly and taking advantage of the fact that the door was open. Two of them entered while the ringleader and another of the participants stayed outside watching and prepared to flee once the robbery was over.
In the last phase of the investigations, the members of the Guardia Civil discovered that the suspects planned to carry out a new robbery at the end of this month of May with similar characteristics in the corridor from Cantabria to Bizkaia in a nearby place to the homes of the detainees.
Having identified the alleged perpetrators and with the intention of aborting the foreseeable new robbery, four entries and a search of houses in the Biscayan towns of Baracaldo, Valle de Trápaga, Gallarta and Abanto y Ciérvana were carried out simultaneously.
At that time, the alleged perpetrators, four men between the ages of 18 and 35, were arrested. In the searches, in addition to different effects used during the robbery, a short blank weapon, various white weapons such as machetes and katanas, jewellery and money were seized.
