The Civil Guard of Costa Teguise investigated three people and arrested another between April 8 and 23, a woman and three men between 28 and 49 years of age, as alleged perpetrators of 10 crimes of robbery with force and one of receiving stolen goods. According to the Benemérita, they are being investigated for repeatedly stealing from water tank facilities belonging to a supply company by breaking the fence and doors, stealing specific material from inside such as special batteries, flow meters and solar panels, all valued at 28,636.44 euros.
The investigation began when a representative of a collaborating company reported a robbery with force that occurred in the water tank located in the town of Caleta de Famara, informing the Civil Guard that they had broken the padlock to access it, stealing specific material worth 4,000 euros.
From there, according to the Benemérita, identical events were reported periodically until the last one reported on March 1, 2019, being a total of 10 exactly the same crimes both in the "modus operandi" and in the stolen effects.
Police and citizen collaboration
According to the Civil Guard, the perpetrators of the investigated crimes used the same "modus operandi" to commit them, being the forcing of the perimeter fence of the water tanks to later break the padlocks of the access doors to them, taking various specific materials of high economic cost such as batteries, flow meters, electrical inverters, solar panels, etc.
Once they got the loot, they sold it in the same call center in Arrecife, with the Civil Guard investigating its owner as the alleged perpetrator of a crime of receiving stolen goods. The stolen objects were supposedly then sent by sea from the same port of Arrecife in containers to third countries, thus hindering their discovery and recovery.
Based on the numerous identical criminal acts, the various police forces of the island were alerted, including local police, National Police and Civil Guard from other districts. And finally, thanks to citizen collaboration, at the beginning of April, a license plate of a suspicious vehicle was obtained, which was stopped in a control established for this purpose by the Local Police of Teguise, discovering inside part of the material stolen from a water tank and proceeding to the arrest of its two occupants, a woman with initials E.O.G. and 29 years of age, and a man with initials E.C.L. and 33 years of age, both residents in Arrecife.
As a result of these arrests and continuing with the police investigations, the Civil Guard managed to gather "reasonably sufficient" evidence to identify and relate more people to these robberies, specifically two more and a third for another crime of receiving stolen goods, managing to identify a fourth, whose arrest is pending. According to the Benemérita, the fact that what was stolen was sent to third countries in containers makes it impossible to recover the material.
