Norita (48) was lying down. It was after eight o’clock at night on January 11 and he felt bad. She was alone: her two daughters had gone out to buy cans of water. Suddenly, the barking of the dogs made her uncomfortable. He got up, went downstairs, and saw that the door to the gallery was wide open. And things were missing.
As she began to understand what had happened, she noticed that two Gucci and Zadig & Voltaire handbags, wallets, her Garmin training watch, airpods, chargers, and, what saddened her most: her high-end bicycle that I had two years to compete in triathlon. The seat was from Miami; wheels imported. The painting had been bought in Argentina. It was practically custom made.
Norita competes in IronMan and managed to be on the podium at the 2019 Half IronMan World Cup in South Africa. She had signed up to run the Punta del Este Half IronMan in March, and her wish was to also qualify for the New Zealand one. Without the bike, his plan was put on hold. If I had to buy it again, I would have to invest between US$12,000 and US$15,000. That is why he offers a US$ 1,000 reward for those who return it.
Despite the fact that both police and prosecutors in the east had assured that this season was being “calm” and without seizures or serious crimes that attracted attention, some residents in La Barra de Maldonado began to organize through WhatsApp groups to be in alert to the string of robberies that, through word of mouth, they learned about.
María (whose real name she preferred not to publish), Norita’s daughter, told The Observer who came to the resort along with her sister to spend the summer at her mother’s house, who is Argentine but lives half the time in each country due to the business she has in Punta del Este.
When they began to think about how the robbery happened so quickly – they left the house for less than half an hour – they saw that, during the day, they had left a loose end.
Earlier, a gardener arrived and asked him to come into the house to cut the grass. Maria let him in because she thought her mother had hired him. But when he talked to her they realized that no one had actually called him. “I was talking to my mom about the gardener who came and she told me: ‘What gardener? I didn’t hire any gardener.’ So we suspect it was that man, because no one hired him, no one paid him anything for his work and he He didn’t claim any payment either,” Norita said.
A few days before, on January 3, María’s father was on the beach at La Posta del Cangrejo and, from the water, he saw a man take his backpack. He got out of the water and ran to stop him. In that, other tourists who were also on the beach began to run with him to try to catch him. The thief felt cornered, dropped the backpack and ran away.
The residents of Los Destinos street are also nervous about the robberies; even more so when you do the math and notice that, in two blocks, they already found out about seven robberies in the first fortnight of the year.
On December 31 at 11 p.m., in one of them they broke two windows that led to the back of the house, but they escaped as soon as the alarm began to sound. In another of the houses they also robbed this season. The neighbors called the police, who were able to arrest the suspect thanks to the clues given by those who saw him.
On December 22, Carlos (also a fictitious name), who is Argentine but lives on the block, lost power. It was five in the afternoon. Next, broken glass and forced doors. Once again, the alarm scared the thieves away.
Two blocks away, on December 26 they broke into another house, when the vacationers were sleeping. They took him to the car. Several of the tourists who stay in that area of La Barra believe that there is a unanimous perception: “Nobody-does-nothing”, says one of them, who does not want to be identified in the note.
“Everything happened because of this joint action between neighbors,” said María, who questions the lack of police presence on the streets. “It seems to me that the police here in Uruguay do not work very well because they are very slow, it is all very tedious, they did not send any patrol to the area knowing that there are robberies. It is not a safe area as the police say,” he complained.
The bicycle that was stolen from Norita Vincent
More of the same
The prosecutor on duty in Maldonado, Sebastián Robles, commented to The Observer days ago that he does not observe “nothing different from other years”, and added that he has not taken note of large thefts of houses that “draw attention” due to their magnitude. Both police officers on foot and residents of the area around the eastern peninsula, which tends to be a focus of attention for the authorities, report a relative calm in the area.
In interview with The Observer Last week, the Maldonado Police Chief, Julio Pioli, stated that the reopening of borders “obviously” moves the needle in terms of security when compared to the previous season, even though he considered that “it is early” for to contrast. This condition affects both the public likely to be the victim of a crime and the one who arrives to become a victimizer.
The hierarch indicated that “Punta del Este has historically been a place appreciated by criminals from various countries”, and that the Headquarters is investigating whether there was income from criminal groups of this type. “Sometimes they are certain thefts committed with great care, trying not to leave any traces. That is perhaps one of the aspects that call our attention”, he stated.
