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

PalmThe National Police have arrested four people—three men and one woman—for allegedly extorting a couple with whom they shared an apartment in Palma. They demanded the couple pay more rent or leave the property, and used a katana, a saber, and an antique pistol to threaten them. The incident began last Friday when a call was received on 091 (the Spanish emergency number) from a couple who 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 patrols were dispatched to the scene and spoke with the couple, who recounted 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 with two other men, whom the victims identified as the perpetrators of the threats they had received the previous day. The officers then 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 why the locks had been changed, and they explained that a woman who managed the tenants and the rooms of the house had ordered them to do so, while one of the men carried 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 to a woman that very afternoon. The couple noticed that their belongings were missing from the room, and when they asked about 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 victims to the building's 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 a room 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.