A man has been arrested for shooting at a school and a nursery from his home using a sniper rifle.
The footage shows the raid by Spanish police on the suspect’s home, with officers then posing with the weapons that they seized in the bust. The police also said they had seized drugs, which the suspect allegedly sold to customers who came by his house located next to the school.
The unnamed suspect, 41, was arrested in Villamediana de Iregua, a village in the province of La Rioja, Spain, the Spanish Guardia Civil said in a statement on Wednesday, 7th December.
The suspect was arrested for shooting from a window of his home with firearms at people’s homes and at schools, including a nursery school.
The police said that there is currently no indication that he had shot at any people but his alleged actions caused alarm in the area, with people in the neighbourhood fearing for their lives.
The Civil Guard said in its statement: “He had generated a great social alarm in Villamediana de Iregua, in La Rioja, after repeatedly firing at chimneys and antennas in homes and schools, creating a risk for people.”
They said that some of the weapons that they seized were “modified compressed air rifles to increase their power or to convert them into prohibited weapons with the capacity to fire 22 calibre ammunition.”
The operation, dubbed operation ‘Nigromante’, which means ‘necromancer’ in English, led to the arrest of the 41-year-old man “as the alleged perpetrator of crimes of illegal possession of weapons, damages and document falsification”.
The police said: “Up to six complaints filed by different residents of this town before the Civil Guard led to the start of the Necromancer operation to discover the alleged perpetrator of numerous shots fired at chimneys or antennas in residential buildings, a school and a nursery.”
They explained that they had deployed “a surveillance and control device in the affected area that allowed them to focus suspicion on a man from the village.”
They added: “For several months this individual had been identified on several occasions. The agents seized three long 5.5mm calibre weapons, two scopes, a box of ammunition, a large knife and various accessories […].”
The police said that an analysis of the weapons indicated that they had been deliberately modified to increase their “lethality”, with other weapons “modified to obtain greater firepower”.
The police also said that they had seized drugs at the property, including 120 MDMA pills, patches and speed, adding that “ecstasy users used to come daily to this property, located a few metres from a school and a nursery, to stock up on this substance.”
The investigation is ongoing.
