A court in Arrecife has sentenced an Irish tourist to compensate with 20,000 euros a taxi driver from Tías after giving him a brutal beating. The sentence also imposed a four-month prison sentence, which "he preferred to serve in his country", as the taxi driver explained to the newspaper La Provincia.
The events occurred when the driver, who prefers to remain anonymous, picked up the man after eleven o'clock at night in Princesa Teguise street, in the tourist town of Puerto del Carmen, after finishing a service on that same road after eleven o'clock at night on March 13.
The man, who showed obvious symptoms of intoxication, according to the taxi driver, could not say in which establishment he was staying, so the taxi professional invited him to get out of the vehicle because he did not know where he had to take him. "When I asked him where he was going, he was not clear. I didn't even put the taximeter on and I didn't start the car either," recalls the taxi driver.
Unconscious on the ground
From that moment on and in view of the fact that he ignored the request of the professional driver, the assaulted opened the door and managed to get him out of the car. The client caught the taxi driver off guard when he was returning to his car, pushed him, fell to the ground and beat him up. As a result of the blows, the taxi driver ended up with seven broken ribs and another "burst".
Read the full story in La Provincia