Polish squatters who allegedly beat two Germans to death when they tried to evict them have finally been arrested following a 20-hour standoff with police.
The suspects are accused of killing the two men inside the detached villa in La Marina, Elche on Monday, just three days before Christmas – before dumping their bodies on a nearby road.
The property is an area hugely popular with the expat community, including Brits, and belongs to a German couple who were in their home country when the incident occurred.
According to sources from the Guardia Civil, they had been legally renting it to a woman while they were away – as she had wanted to spend Christmas with her family at the villa.
However, when she returned from a shopping trip on Monday, she found it had been seized by two squatters – with authorities believing they had been in the home for four days prior.
Three male friends of the owners, all German, went round to the property to confront the squatters on Monday afternoon.
It was then that the squatters are accused of launching a savage attack, killing two of them and leaving a third seriously injured and now hospitalised at Elche General University Hospital.
The authorities were alerted and a major operation was launched involving 30 Guardia CIvil officers, specialist negotiators and translators.
The suspects were finally taken into custody at around 2.45pm on Tuesday, after a 20-hour standoff.
The Guardia Civil had sealed off the area to prevent any escape, while residents were advised to remain indoors due to the serious risk posed by the suspects, including the possibility of violent resistance.
Negotiators spent hours communicating with the occupants, assisted by at least one translator, who addressed them via a megaphone.
Some business owners even decided to close up early over fears for their safety.
When the suspects were finally led away, applause broke out among watching residents.
The mayor of Elche, Pablo Ruz (Partido Popular), said in a press conference that the alleged murderers had been arrested three times previously for attempted squatting.
Ruz, who governs the third largest city in the Valencian Community in coalition with Vox, blasted ‘the laws and those responsible for them’ for allowing criminals like these to be ‘repeat offenders.’
‘It’s a serious, massive, and immoral problem,’ he said, adding that, in his opinion, an ‘anti-squatting office’ is necessary – a constant demand of the Vox party – to ‘protect property owners, not criminals.’
A friend of the deceased claimed the same squatters entered the house twice before and were arrested and released.
‘The owner, who lives in Germany,’ he said, sent two friends ‘to repair the doors and alarms’ that had been broken ‘and to look after the house’.
The investigation continues.
