An alleged thief escaped being lynched by a group of young people who detained him and beat him in Santiago de Cubaallegedly after having committed a theft of a cell phone.
The events took place this Friday in the Vista Alegre neighborhood of that city. According to reports from neighbors sent to the independent journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labradathe young man who was attacked was freed from further harm after being beaten by other young people who were traveling on motorbikes.
Shouting “thief and swindler,” the motorists attacked the alleged criminal and stripped him of his clothes. A video sent to the independent journalist showed one of the attackers with a stone in his hand, and the detainee bleeding from an open wound in the head.
“Then the supposed ‘evildoer’ was able to escape, running down the street in his underwear, while another young man tried to fall behind him. The others told him to leave everything there,” Mayeta Labrada indicated on her social networks, censuring the use of violence as a form of “justice” and advocating to request the intervention of the authorities in cases like this.
The scenes of neighbors and citizens who catch thieves and decide to take the law into their own hands are becoming common in Cuba, a country in which crime and crime rates continue to grow as the socioeconomic crisis that has impoverished deepens. to the population to levels never seen before.
Sometimes the discomfort caused by the capture of suspected thieves red-handed They exacerbate the indignation of the neighbors, who, driven by anger, may inflict serious injuries on the detainees. However, more often than not, the scenes end with the suspected thief tied up until the police arrive.
That was what happened in mid-April with a young thief who was caught red-handed inside a house in the Mantilla neighborhood, when he tried to steal the belongings of its residents. The neighbors tied him up so he wouldn’t escape while they waited for the police to arrive..
Days before, in Santiago de Cuba, a group of neighbors They tied up a thief who allegedly snatched a cell phone in the middle of the street. Images spread on social networks showed the young man’s state of anxiety, as well as what appeared to be a blow to one of his eyes, which looked closed.
At the end of April, a man who was almost lynched by residents of Santiago de Cuba who mistook him for a thief, offered his version of the events through social networks, declaring himself innocent and attributing what happened to a misunderstanding.
“I am a worker, it was a misunderstanding”he assured Ramon Moya Ramirezwho was the target of popular anger for an incident that the crowd interpreted as a robbery, and for which the neighbors captured him, tied him to a post and he was the victim of violent treatment.
