A quieter night for Roquetas del Mar after over 100 Guardia Civil anti riot police and a helicopter kept the overnight calm. Miguel Corpas, civil governor of Almeria has promised that the extra police units will stay until peace and tranquility return to the streets.
Meanwhile, a different story is emerging from local residents as to the cause of the original fight in which a 28 year old Senegalese man called Ousmane Kote was knifed and killed. Local reports say that a group of his friends were “hanging out” in front of a local locutorio (“phone-home” shop) when the alleged murderers threw a bucket of water over them from a second story window. Ousmane finished his phone call, came out of the shop and urged his friends to leave the scene without confronting the gitanos who were shouting at them from the window.
Shortly afterwards, he returned to the shop to make a second call, whereupon the gitanos came downstairs, confronted him, and when he refused to leave stabbed him. He was dead before the ambulance arrived.
All reports concur that Ousmane neither smoked nor took drugs; he has been described as a hard working, clean living young man. Reports also say that it took an hour and half for the ambulance to arrive along with the local police.
Local community leaders have repeated the call for the police to find the killer, saying that seeing justice to be done will help calm the situation. Bearing in mind the Guardia Civil record in hunting down Gitanos (ie, zilch – Gitanos are the only people the Guardia are scared of) I think it may be a while before they find this chap.
Photos of the scenes (ideal.es)
Video of the riots (ideal.es)