Lives ruined for the sake of a few euros and a mobile phone

POLICE in Almeria City have arrested five youths, four of them minors, in connection with an alleged robbery that left a nurse in a coma.

The 60-year-old victim has been in a coma since the day of the attack on November 5 and remains in intensive care at the hospital where she works.

The incident occured at nine o’clock in the evening when she was returning home from her shift at the Torrecardenas Hospital. The youths allegedly snatched her bag. During the tussle the victim fell against a garden wall breaking her skull and suffering serious internal injuries.

The investigation was complicated with witnesses pointing to three boys, two of them on foot and one on a bike, but barely able to provide a description of the flight of ‘three figures’. The agents followed the trail left by the alleged juvenile offenders and the next day found the woman’s purse inside a school playground and later retrieved a mobile phone . The facts pointed to three boys aged 15 and 16 years, plus another child and an adult who were arrested accused of the receiving of a stolen mobile phone. In statements to police, two children have admitted their direct participation in the incident, although they denied any knowledge of the consequences of the attack and the injuries caused to the victim.

All five people connected with the attack are now behind bars awaiting trial.