A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20653, 29 June 1935, Page 8

A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS

" SHOOT FIRST” ORDER. A BAD TIME, BUT NOT FOB GUNMEN. BARCELONA, May 22. "Shoot and ask no questions!** That was the order issued to the Barcelona police by the new Catalan GovernorGeneral, Don Manuel Portela, immediately upon, taking office a short time ago. The police took the governor-general at his word but the result has been disastrous thus far, because to the innocent bystander it would appear that they have mainly been engaged in shooting each other and letting the bad gunmen get away. A drive on bandits a few days ago left a casualty list of two policemen killed and six wounded, all the victims of each other's guns. And although the police announced that as a result of their efforts they had got at least one robber, lie proved to be but an innocent bystander. The Press was severely warned by the censor against printing the facts about this tragedy of errors and so had to confine itself to the phoney official report. But the way of it seems to have been as follows: The police had been warned that a robbery was to take place and so stationed plainclothes men at strategic points near the scene of the intended theft. The plainclothes men hailed a police car which arrived on the scene, but the occupants of the car, thinking the plainclothes men were bandits, started to fire on them. During the melee there arrived a taxi which the plainclothes men supposed to contain the real bad men. They started to shoot it up and bomb it with hand grenades. A bomb missed its mark and exploded in the police car, killing the driver and so severely wounding the three others that one has since died. The tragedy lias its elements of similarity with a double killing in the suburb of Hospitalet some months ago. The aeting-Mayor of the town had received a threatening letter demanding that he place a sunt of money in a thicket, and signed, “The Revolutionary Committee.” Witli a companion and members of the civil guard he went to the spot during the night in the hope of capturing the supposed blackmailers. Toward morning sliote rang out. An investigation revealed the dead bodies of the aetingMayor and a civil guard. It would appear that the aeting-Mayor, having become separated from the civil guards jand hearing a noise, took alarm and fired in the direction of the noise, killing the civil guard. The other civil guards then fired in the direction of the shooter and killed the aeting-Mayor. The threatening letter turned out to be a joke on the part of the acting-Mayor’s friends.