Agents from the Homicide Team of the Organic Unit of the Judicial Police of the Guardia Civil of Alicante arrested a British man this week on suspicion of being involved in the shooting death of a 29-year-old English man, whose body was discovered on December 21st in an urbanisation on the Orihuela Costa, in the Campoamor area.
The ongoing investigation into the crime, which has been declared secret by an Orihuela court, pointed to a settling of drug-trafficking scores. So far, no information has been disclosed concerning the name of the arrested individual, who appeared before a judge in Orihuela on Thursday, February 5th .
According to sources at the Valencian Community’s High Court of Justice (TSJ), last Thursday the Third Chamber of the Orihuela Court of First Instance ordered the suspect’s interim custody without bail. The suspect is under investigation for homicide/murder. According to the same sources, the case has been classified as confidential. The Guardia Civil is keeping this case strictly confidential, leading detectives to suspect they are looking for more people implicated in the murder.
A Local Police patrol on the Orihuela Costa alerted the Guardia Civil to the crime around nine p.m. on the 21st. The municipal agents went to a property in the Lomas de Cabo Roig urbanisation, in the Campoamor district, after being told by various persons that something severe had happened to a friend at a residence.
Officers arrived to the residence and discovered a young man’s bloodied body. They immediately alerted the Guardia Civil, and the procedure for these types of violent killings was initiated. Specialists from the Judicial Police and the Guardia Civil’s Criminalistics Laboratory began investigating the young man’s shooting death, and in less than a month, the Homicide Team investigators located and apprehended a British citizen accused of involvement in the crime.
One of the lines of investigation explored by the Guardia Civil following this incident was the likelihood that it was connected to the killing of 32-year-old British national Peter F. ten days earlier. This Englishman, represented by lawyer Francisco Miguel Galiana Botella, was freed on bail two weeks ago from prison, where he was serving as the leader of a group that extorted cannabis clubs in the Vega Baja region in order to seize control of them. He robbed one of these clubs in San Fulgencio, and when he was apprehended in Orihuela Costa—in an operation that injured three Guardia Civil officers—two submachine guns, classified as weapons of war, and more than 300 rounds of ammunition of various calibres were taken from his home.
Arrested in England
This Briton, once known as Sonny James R. and later changed his name to Peter F., spent several days in the hospital recovering from three gunshot wounds sustained when he drove his car into his garage at home. In January, he was arrested in Merseyside, England, despite the fact that the Orihuela court investigating him for the robbery of the cannabis club in San Fulgencio had placed him on bail with the condition that he not leave the country and appear in court every two weeks.
Following Peter F.’s arrest, the magistrate of Court Number 3 of the Orihuela Court of First Instance, who is also investigating the Orihuela shooting, revoked his provisional release and ordered his detention, issuing an international arrest warrant. As a result, if he remains in detention in England, extradition processes to Spain will begin.
These occurrences are in addition to another British man’s disappearance in Vega Baja, whose whereabouts remain unknown following the death of a young man shot in Orihuela Costa.
The Guardia Civil is keeping all possibilities open, ranging from a new violent killing caused by disagreements between drug trafficking gangs in the United Kingdom and Ireland to a voluntary disappearance.
Author: Derek Appleton
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