Three men have handed themselves in over the Rua Augusta shooting that wounded a Swedish tourist
The investigation into the 10 August shooting that hit a 42-year-old Swedish visitor has changed hands and changed charge. The three men sought by Portugal's judicial police presented themselves on Tuesday and were being questioned that night on suspicion of attempted homicide.
The three men wanted by Portugal’s Polícia Judiciária over the Rua Augusta shooting presented themselves to the authorities on Tuesday. By late evening they were being questioned. The offence named is attempted homicide.
Investigators had identified them during the day. A morning search operation failed to find them, and the judicial police obtained an undertaking from their defence lawyers that all three would come in before the day was out. They did.
The case goes back to 10 August, on the busiest pedestrian street in Lisbon’s Baixa. A 42-year-old Swedish tourist was hit in the abdomen by a stray bullet fired during a confrontation between members of rival groups. The shot was not meant for her.
Two things changed between August and September
The first is who is running the investigation. August’s arrest was made by the PSP, on a warrant from a separate domestic violence case. That man went before an investigating judge and, as we reported at the time, walked out under fortnightly reporting conditions. Within days it was clear the two police forces were not pointing at the same person. The inquiry sat with the judicial police.
The second is the charge. In August this was described as gunfire and a stray bullet. The framing these three men presented themselves under is attempted homicide, which reads a targeted confrontation into the night, with the tourist hit by accident.
What is still unknown
Most of what matters next. Detentions are not convictions, and the stage now opening is presentation to an investigating judge and the setting of custody measures — the same step at which, five weeks ago, this case went the way nobody expected.
Still unanswered, too, is the question left hanging in August, when the Government announced 400 extra PSP officers for Lisbon and Porto and a joint assessment of crime in the Baixa: whether the reinforced deployment is still on the ground six weeks on, and whether that assessment ever produced anything. September has brought visible signs of more policing at the city’s entry points, with the PSP running document checks on arrivals by coach and train. Presence is not the same thing as result, though, and nobody has published the result yet.
Photo: Andrew Milligan sumo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
