The Civil Guard attributes to a 50-year-old man of Portuguese nationality, several robberies committed in recent months in the church of San Lourenzo de Piñor, in Barbadás. The suspect was arrested the day before yesterday, when he tried to hide inside the temple of San Bernabé de A Valenzá, also located in the same council.
Today he will give a statement before the investigating judge, to gauge his possible involvement in the assaults and desecration recorded in other parishes. As FARO reported in its March 23 edition, the chapel of San Mauro de Barbadás, erected in the urban nucleus of the council, was raided on the eve of the San José bridge; which ended with a new episode of assault and desecration recorded on Sunday.
The Civil Guard is investigating whether the arrested man is related to the rest of the crimes, since the two churches raided in Barbadás are close to the A Valenzá temple, in which he allegedly planned another robbery.
This is how the parish priest of A Valenzá, José Roberto González Garza, understood it. While officiating a Eucharist, at 7.30 pm the day before yesterday, the priest observed "how a person entered and stood behind the door." He continued with the celebration, "but I saw him approach the stairs that give access to the platform, so I thought badly and suspected that he might try to hide here to perform at dawn," he told this newspaper.
The Civil Guard, which had intensified surveillance in the area after the latest assaults, located the suspect around 8:00 p.m., who was arrested from the temple.
The armed institute maintains the investigations to verify if there is a connection between the irruptions to the different churches. Sources close to the investigation explained that the detainee was carrying a screwdriver that he apparently obtained after raiding the church of San Lourenzo de Piñor.
On the other hand, the priest of A Valenzá, González Garza, affirmed yesterday that the suspect carried, when he was arrested, a photographic camera with several images of churches and sacred objects. Not in the catalog of photographs, according to the priest, "neither the church of Barbadás nor that of Piñor, although they could also have been erased," he said. The images corresponded to churches "in the province of Ourense".
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