Some men fired around 40 shots at a precarious house and then set it on fire on Saturday night in La Colinadepartment of Rivera, as reported by Telemundo and confirmed The Observer with Ricardo Magdaleno, coordinator of the Rivera Police Department. A woman had lived there with her three-year-old daughter, but at the time of the attack the house was uninhabited.
“At the time there was no one. The house had been inhabited by those people. It is a place of critical context La Colina, one day they are in one place and another day they are in another. They are very precarious houses. So they change places. It’s like a clan there”he explained.
The small house was made up of a zinc roof, coastal wood and a dirt floor, and was consumed by fire. “They arrived, they burst into the neighborhood. They entered through a passage with dirt streets, they fired several shots and at the exit they set it on fire. And since it is made of wood, it immediately combusted,” Magdaleno reported.
The case “is linked to drug problems; consumption or sale”said the coordinator of the headquarters.
La Colina is located south of the Santa Teresa neighborhood. “It is a new settlement that originated a few years ago,” said Magdaleno. “There are mountains and fields in the surroundings. It is even close to a ravine.” The context and the schedule, being at night, helped those who attacked the house. “They have a fairly large field to be able to escape people and that favors them,” he explained.
Also, with “dirt streets, it is difficult to access” for the police, who went to the area anyway after neighbors call 911 and report the fire. They were also members of the Fire Department, the Scientific Police, the Fire Department, the Republican Guard, “all the operational forces,” said Magdaleno.
9 and 38mm caliber pods were found at the scene; as well as unexploded cartridges that the headquarters coordinator estimates were dropped while reloading one of the attackers.
The Investigations Directorate is working on the case together with the Prosecutor’s Office.
