Brit man who cheated death after being shot outside his Spain home left ‘paralysed from neck down’
A British man has been left "paralysed from the neck down" and remains in intenstive care after being shot[1] outside his home in Spain[2]. The 27-year-old cheated death after he was saved at the scene by police[3] officers who used their own hands to plug the bullet wounds and stop him bleeding to death. Overnight local reports said the gunshot victim[4] had been left tetraplegic.
The unnamed Brit is still in intensive care at Virgen de La Arrixaca Hospital in the south-east Spanish city of Murcia, although doctors are said to be considering moving him to a centre specialising in dealing with paralysis. The masked man who shot the expat, as he entered his apartment block with his girlfriend in the village of Santiago de la Ribera on the Mar Menor near La Manga golf[5] resort, is still being hunted by police.
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The 27-year-old was hit twice, in the knee and his side (SOLARPIX.COM)
Detectives have yet to release an official statement about the attempted murder. Although police sources say they are keeping an open mind on the motive for the attack, there is nothing pointing to it being a bungled robbery at this stage.
The violent incident happened around 8.30pm on Monday. Neighbours said they thought initially the shots that rang out were firecrackers kids were playing with before the first police cars and ambulances arrived. The victim was initially reported to be Ukrainian before investigators confirmed he was a British national.
He was hit by two of the four shots the attacker fired. One hit him in the knee and another in the side. Local newspaper La Verdad said the serious injuries he had sustained began to become apparent when he came round in hospital intensive care, where he is said to be under police guard.
The gunman fled in a vehicle believed to have been driven by an accomplice. A car matching its description was later found abandoned in a tunnel on the nearby AP-7 motorway after being set on fire. Earlier this week it was claimed the gunshot victim had moved to his current home from Torrevieja a half-hour drive north after undisclosed problems with a criminal gang.
The spot where the shooting happened is just a 20-minute drive north of the area where two British tourists died and a third was critically injured on Saturday night after their hire car was hit by a speedboat which came loose from a trailer on the back of another vehicle in front of them. The accident on the RM-12, a dual carriageway known colloquially as La Manga motorway, caused a massive pile-up involving around half a dozen cars. The driver of the vehicle with the boat on the back, a suspected 'narco lancha' used by drug smugglers, fled the scene.
Detectives are saying little about the ongoing investigation to find him but are understood to have located the trailer in a nearby residential area called Los Belones.
The police force hunting him, the Civil Guard, is the same one that is investigating Monday evening's shooting.