Horror as Brit, 29, shot dead in popular Spanish holiday hotspot | World | News
A Brit has been shot dead on the Spanish island of Costa Blanca in the latest in a series of violent crimes to rock the popular holiday coastline. A Civil Guard specialist homicide unit based in Alicante was last night investigating the murder of the 29-year-old, whose bullet-riddled body was found at a residence in an area known as Campoamor in Orihuela Costa, just north of the popular tourist resort of Torrevieja.
News of the latest murder comes less than three weeks after a Briton cheated death after being shot at least three times in an underground car park in the same area. Detectives are investigating whether two crimes involving British and Irish nationals and others on the Costa Blanca in recent months are linked. Reports of the murder of the unnamed 29-year-old Brit began to emerge on Sunday night (December 28), but it is understood his body was found on December 21 in a residential area called Lomas del Garbinet, which is part of the Campoamor region.
Local police are said to have been tipped off by the victim’s friends that “something serious” had happened to him and found his bloody body after going to the property pointed out to them.
Civil Guard detectives are understood to be treating the incident as a drug-related offence. No arrests have been made yet.
In the failed assassination attempt on December 11, it was reported that approximately 15 bullets were fired into the car of a 32-year-old British man in the Lomas de Cabo Roig settlement of Orihuela Costa. The victim was taken to Torrevieja University Hospital and transferred to the intensive care unit. The targeted man was later identified locally as one of two Britons arrested and being investigated for an armed robbery at a marijuana club in nearby San Fulgencio last year.
He had been allowed out of prison on bail for about two weeks before he was targeted, nearly seven months after he was taken into custody following his April arrest for allegedly trying to evade police by holding an elderly couple hostage in their own home.
Civil Guard detectives are investigating the attack as a possible outcome of a showdown between rival gangs.
In May, an Irishman was seriously injured after being shot in the head near a nearby shopping mall called La Zenia Boulevard. Two weeks later two suspects were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. A month later, a second Irishman, 29, was stabbed in the neck from behind while urinating near the same shopping centre, and required emergency life-saving surgery. A 58-year-old Irishman was arrested for the knife attack in July.
On January 7, the body of Belfast-born father-of-one John George was found in an orchard at Rojales, near Torrevieja, following anguished appeals from his family following his disappearance the previous month. Two men, including suspected killer Johnny Smyth, also from Belfast, have been arrested and are currently on bail.
Smyth, who was held on an international arrest warrant at an Airbnb in northern Portugal in March after escaping from his Costa Blanca expatriate home and being extradited to Spain the following month, was told he could leave his holding cell earlier this month after paying €100,000 (£87,100) bail.
