In Playa Honda especially, there are numerous galleries of products typical of the shopping basket, which have already taken measures to avoid being the next victim. "I am taking part of the remaining money out of the office to take it to the bank now, that says it all," said Teodoro González, Administrative-Financial Head of Congelados Roper this week.
The majority agree that it is not a new phenomenon and that the wave of assaults is repeated every so often, "for some years now, the same thing happens around the month of September, I think they do it for parties, but lately they are being very professional in the way they act," says one of the managers of the Cash and Carry hypermarket, who acknowledges that the area is very conflictive and that is why new security measures have already been taken in his establishment for some time and "so far they are giving us results".
The Cash Mar supermarket, located in Playa Honda, also reinforced its security after the robbery it suffered about two years ago. "Because of the way it was done in Vivó, we believe that they are the same ones who robbed us and other warehouses, what happens is that when they gathered money they stopped assaulting, maybe so that they would not investigate further, but now they have returned," says Rosa Rodríguez, manager of Cash Mar, who acknowledges that they try to withdraw money from the establishment continuously as a security measure.
Every night a security person is in charge of touring the industrial area of Playa Honda, but for the moment, those responsible for the warehouses have not decided to take any other joint measure, "we are not even able to meet for that, much less to agree," says a manager of Cash and Carry.
Assault on the Bimbo warehouse
In the case of the warehouse of the Bimbo bread company in Lanzarote, specifically in the industrial area of Puerto Naos in Arrecife, the modus operandi was somewhat different. Company personnel confirmed to this media the robbery suffered in their facilities during the early morning of Wednesday to Thursday, August 31, through the "ram-raid" system, although it was against the door of the building that they charged.
Apparently the assailants, two young residents of the nearby neighborhood of Los Alonsos, used a stolen car, a Volswagen Golf model, to crash it against the company's facilities and managed to introduce it inside the building. According to the Bimbo supervisor, "they destroyed the door" in addition to causing significant damage inside.
One of the company's delivery drivers arrived at his work early on Thursday morning and discovered the situation in which the warehouse offices had been left, which were totally destroyed, from the doors to the partitions, since the thieves had needed enough space to maneuver with one of the company's lifting machines, with which they could move the Bimbo safe, a structure of about five hundred kilos in weight, which almost miraculously they managed to introduce inside the car and flee.
But the work of the assailants was not entirely clean. Due to the impact of the car against the door, the bumper with the vehicle's license plate remained in the warehouse, in addition to the fingerprints that one of the assailants left imprinted with his own blood, after cutting himself while perpetrating the robbery.
Finally the young men were arrested by the police after a chase through the streets of the Los Alonsos neighborhood, from which the thieves originated. As of today, the safe is already in its place.
The National Police believes that the two detainees could be the perpetrators of other robberies that have occurred in the Puerto Naos area, one of the most recent, in the Decoraciones de León establishment.
A few days later it was the turn of the Kalise warehouse. During the early morning of last September 3, the offices of the Canarian ice cream company Kalise, located in the town of Playa Honda, were assaulted by several individuals, who through holes made in the ceiling, accessed the facilities, where they ransacked the safe and caused damage to the office.
Both robberies in food galleries are added to the one that occurred during the early morning of Saturday to Sunday, August 20 in the Vivó hypermarket, located in Playa Honda, where several people accessed the offices of the hypermarket through a "hole" and took all the Saturday's collection and several valuables. In total and after the first assessments, the owner of Vivó, Juan Guerra, valued the losses at about 70,000 euros.
The thieves effectively disabled the hypermarket's alarm and, as in the Kalise warehouse, it seems that they had planned the assault because they accessed the offices directly and did not steal anything from the rest of the facilities.
