Two Mossos prosecuted for shooting the Tarragona gunman due to an "uncontrolled and disproportionate" action
One of the agents, who will appeal the decision, fired "indiscriminately" at least 17 times
BarcelonaOn December 14, 2021, a former employee of the company Securitas in Tarragona entered his former workplace armed and wounded three former colleagues. During his escape, he also shot and wounded a Mossos d'Esquadra officer and finally barricaded himself in a farmhouse in Riudoms (Baix Camp), where the police force's elite unit shot him down. The shooting left Marin Eugen Sabau with serious injuries, which after several judicial appeals ended up receiving euthanasia that he/she was asking for. With his death, the case against him was closed, but another one was still underway in which the eleven officers who neutralized the gunman were being investigated for injuries. Now the instructor of this case has prosecuted two agents of the Special Intervention Group (GEI) who shot him in an action he describes as "uncontrolled, disproportionate and with a purpose that could go beyond neutralizing Sabau, which was to riddle his physical integrity".
The interlocutory order that has advanced the Tarragona Diary and which ARA has consulted describes that one of the prosecuted officers fired between 17 and 19 times at the barricaded man, whom he had approached to a distance of about 20 meters while another police officer fired warning shots. When he was already close to him and ordered him to halt, Sabau turned towards the officer and fired at him. Then the police officer, "exceeding the purpose of neutralizing the individual and acting with absolute disregard for his physical integrity, fired at him indiscriminately". The other prosecuted police officer allegedly fired a single shot at his right leg.
Sources from the officers' defense have explained to ARA that they will appeal the instructor's decision before the Tarragona Court to try to prevent the police officers from going to trial for the injuries to the gunman. In their view, the judge's decision is based on "personal opinions" and not on evidence.
The judge assesses in his document that the police intervention has "the approval of the immense majority" of the population, but adds that the evaluation of a police action cannot be simplified into a kind of "social vengeance." After the police action, Sabau was rushed by helicopter to Bellvitge Hospital, where they found serious spinal injuries and multiple gunshot wounds. He lost "practically all mobility of the body" and did not leave the hospital until he received euthanasia.