In search of two detainees released after a month in prison: shooting at a restaurant in Marbella
The Instruction Court number 1 of Marbella has issued a search and arrest warrant this week against Darren H. and Gerrard S., the two suspects of firing a dozen shots at a restaurant in broad daylight on March 11 and being linked to organized crime. The sequence of events, as confirmed by SUR, was as follows: on the 25th of the month of the shooting, they were arrested in a large-scale operation by the National Police and, two days later, they were provisionally incarcerated.
Just a month later, the Third Section of the Provincial Court of Málaga ordered their release after admitting the appeals filed by the defense, citing a new doctrine established by the Constitutional Court. Among other measures, as stated in both rulings accessed by this newspaper, they were required to appear on the 1st and 15th of each month and whenever summoned before the nearest court to their residence or the one handling the case, in addition to the prohibition of leaving Spanish territory and the confiscation of their passports.
Nothing has been heard from the suspects since then, and they also failed to appear before the judicial authority in early May, which prompted the issuance of a search and arrest warrant. A case that once again tarnishes Málaga, as revealed by El Confidencial, and which -despite the differences- somehow recalls the controversial release in March of the leader of the Mocro Maffia arrested in Marbella, Karim Bouyakhrichan, the most wanted criminal in the Netherlands, who has been missing since April 1.
Access to the proceedings
The decision of the Provincial Court to provisionally release Darren H. and Gerrard S. is based on the appeal filed by the defense, claiming that they were not allowed to access «the essential elements of the proceedings» in order to challenge their deprivation of liberty decreed by the Instruction Court number 4 of Marbella, which was on duty at the time and ordered their provisional incarceration.
Once the two suspects were brought before the court, they were informed in their language of their rights and the crimes for which they had been arrested, as well as the essential elements of the investigation that, at that time, they were allowed to know due to the secrecy of the case. The evidence that led to their arrest, which was orally communicated to them, was based on police surveillance and the footage from surveillance cameras.
When the lawyers took the floor during the hearing, they explicitly stated that their right to access the essential elements of the procedure that had led to the imprisonment of the two shooting suspects had been violated, preventing them from fully exercising their right to defense. Likewise, they pointed out that, prior to the hearing, a written access to this information had been requested based on Constitutional Court ruling 21/2018.
After studying both appeals, the Provincial Court considered that, despite appreciating the judge’s intention to inform the parties of those essential elements that she considered indispensable for the exercise of the right to defense, the information provided orally «does not meet the demands established by the Constitutional Court on the legal provision granting access to the essential elements of the proceedings».
The judges, on this point, have ruled that copies of those documents that did not compromise the secrecy of the proceedings and served as the basis for the imprisonment order should have been provided to the parties. Hence, the Third Section ordered the release of Gerrard S. on April 22 and Darren H. a day later.
The investigation
The shooting for which the two missing men were arrested took place around noon on March 11 at the La Sala restaurant. According to information obtained by this newspaper, the night before the incident, an argument allegedly occurred inside the establishment between one of the managers and one of the detainees, where threats were supposedly made. However, investigators are convinced that this clash had an underlying motive that has not yet been fully clarified, and that the shots were a kind of warning. In this case, according to sources, the security cameras were crucial in identifying the alleged perpetrators.
The meticulous analysis of the footage allowed the reconstruction of what happened before noon that day, when the establishment was targeted with 15 shots from the vicinity. An individual left a house in Nueva Andalucía on a Honda 750 with his face concealed under a full-face helmet. At that time, the motorcycle had a British license plate. The motorcyclist then traveled to another nearby house and entered a garage. Cameras then showed two men leaving that residence.
As they drove off, the previous individual became a passenger and the license plate had been changed to a Spanish one. The restaurant was allegedly about to open to the public, so it is suspected that the perpetrators knew there would be employees inside. The driver waited with the high-displacement motorcycle running while the other got off and fired about a dozen shots, most of which hit the glass facade. The 9mm Parabellum bullets also remained embedded in some armchairs. They then fled the scene.
The two suspects, both around 30 years old and of British and Irish origin, were arrested on March 25 in a large-scale operation by the National Police, involving Udyco investigators with the collaboration of other units such as the UPR of the Marbella Police Headquarters, and SWAT teams and Aerial Units assigned to the Provincial Police Headquarters in Málaga.
According to sources, among other crimes, they are accused of attempted murder, serious threats, illegal possession of firearms -a pistol was found in one of their homes, although ballistic analysis will determine if it was the same one used in the attack-, document forgery, and violation of the Immigration Law. During these searches, officials also seized a large machete and €31,190.
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