Four people arrested for extorting a couple with a katana to force them to pay more rent

PalmThe National Police have arrested a total of four people: three men and one woman. They allegedly extorted a couple with whom they shared an apartment in Palma, demanding more rent or forcing them to leave the property. To threaten the couple, they used a katana, a saber, and an antique pistol. The incident began last Friday when a call was received on 091 (the Spanish emergency number). A couple reported that when they went to enter their shared apartment, they noticed the locks had been changed while they were away. In a statement, the police force indicated that several patrol cars were dispatched to the location and spoke with the couple, who explained what had happened. According to their account, the previous day they had argued with two men with whom they shared the apartment, and these men threatened them, demanding they leave the room or pay more.

At the time of the confrontation, the two men were carrying the aforementioned weapons, and the couple told the officers that it was not the first time they had been intimidated by them. The officers then accompanied the couple to the door of the house and confirmed that the locks had indeed been changed. Unable to gain entry, they rang the doorbell. A man opened the door from inside, where he was accompanied by two other men, whom the victims identified as the perpetrators of the threats they had received the previous day. The officers entered the house with the couple, who, upon trying to access the room they were renting, realized that the lock there had also been changed.

The police questioned the men about the reason for changing the locks, and they explained that a woman who managed the tenants and the rooms in the house had ordered them to do so, while one of the men was responsible for carrying out her orders. The officers ordered the men to open the couple's room, where they found an elderly man who explained that he had rented the room that same afternoon to a woman. The couple noticed that their belongings were missing from the room, and when they asked for them, the three men told them that, on the woman's orders, they had been removed and were piled up on the building's roof. Later, the woman who managed the property came to the house but could not provide a valid reason for the change of locks. Meanwhile, a patrol car accompanied the couple to the roof, where they confirmed that their personal belongings were exposed to the elements. After recovering their belongings, the couple reported that approximately 950 euros, which they had kept in a drawer, had been stolen. Finally, officers located a pistol with an axe head, a katana, and a curved-blade saber in one of the rooms of the house. For these reasons, the officers arrested the three men and the woman as suspected perpetrators of coercion and threats, and took them to the police station.