“It was crazy but I would do it again”: the story of the man who confronted a group of thieves and destroyed his own car to prevent his father-in-law from being mugged

“This is a humble neighborhood, ours is a humble house. We are not money, we are working people. They did not expect my reaction or that of my neighbors, but sometimes no matter how much you give everything, they throw you the same and I had no choice but to react. I know it is an act of madness but this is my family and I would do it again “.

Who speaks is Miguel Angel Perez, 37-year-old by profession a bus driver, who this weekend -in an unusual sequence that was recorded by a security camera- confronted a group of thieves, wrecked his own car and was injured to prevent his father-in-law and a family friend from being mugged in front of his house in Villa Diamante, in the Buenos Aires district of Lanús.

The tense episode occurred this Sunday around 10 in the morning, when Enrique Carlos Caruso, 68 years old, came home with his friend César Rojas, 70, to look for his wife and go out with his daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren to eat and spend the day outdoors.

While they were still inside their Renault Clio, a white Citröen C3 slowed down a few feet later. At least four of the five criminals who were on board, allegedly armed, got out of the car and tried to make them get out to assault them.

At that moment, his son-in-law, Miguel Ángel, who had followed him in his Chevrolet Corsa with his family, turned the corner and noticed the attempted robbery.

“My wife started screaming because we saw that they were struggling. I stopped at the corner, got her and my children out of the car and as I saw that they were going to hit him, I had no choice but to do the crazy thing I did ”, Miguel explains himself in dialogue with Infobae.

What followed can be clearly seen in the video images, which were released this past Sunday by the Chief of Staff and head of the Municipality’s security area, Diego Kravetz, within a campaign for greater punishments for thieves who steal with replica firearms.

Miguel’s Chevrolet Corsa He approaches and, without slowing down at any time, hits from behind the car in which the criminals were, who had stolen 40 minutes before in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Flores.

“The one seen in the video with a green and blue jacket points the gun at me when I was getting closer and I feel like he’s shooting at me. Then I accelerate and face as if to attack him ”, explained Miguel. “There he ran to the side and I hit the C3. I honestly thought at the time ‘it’s him or me.’

As a result of the crash, in which the offender was not injured, Miguel hit his head against the windshield and began to bleed. The Corsa’s nose, on the other hand, was smashed. At that moment, he decided to get out of the car and face them.

Miguel says: “When I’m getting closer I see that one gets out of the car with a gun, so I turned back. But since I saw that it wasn’t firing, I started forward, hit the rear window with my fist and went through it. There the rest got off and I realized that they were coming on me, so I stood up to the biggest one because I knew that if not the four of them would kill me ”.

The fist fight lasted for a few moments, in which Miguel received several pineapples on his head. At that moment, when other neighbors approached to try to catch the thieves, four of them ran away while the rest, according to the victim’s account, the one who was most injured, managed to get on the Clio de Caruso, who also had injuries from the fall in the middle of the confrontation.

“I got in on the other side and we started the pineapples inside the car. He would take out the parking brake and I would put it back on. At that moment another car stopped, an officer dressed as a police officer got out and jumped with me to get it out, ”says the man. “I couldn’t see his face because his whole eye was full of blood. She struggled with me to try to release him and there the thief accelerates, we both fall on the street and he escapes with the car through the grass ”.

After a few moments, members of the Buenos Aires Police arrested one of the thieves who had gone on foot and tried to take refuge in a hairdresser a few blocks away: It’s about a 16-year-old young man, with initials LAP, residing in the Pompeii neighborhood, in the City of Buenos Aires, which in the course of Sunday was transferred to the Lanús 5th Police Station and made available to Justice.

The rest of the assailants remain at large and the stolen car has not yet been found.

“This is how the residents of the suburbs have to defend themselves while politics discusses an alien agenda completely removed from the day-to-day life of the people. Once again we regret an assault that could have ended in a tragedy ”, Kravetz said on his Twitter account, where he insisted with his campaign to further penalize the use of replica weapons.

Currently, the Penal Code considers in the accusations the aptitude to fire a weapon used in the robbery that a replica does not have. In judicial practice, In these cases, theft is actually imputed, but the use of the weapon is not calculated as an aggravating factor.

“It can be up to any ordinary citizen who wants to live in peace. This time we caught one of the criminals, but let’s say enough. Sign the petition so that the one who commits a crime with a reply goes to prison and we do not regret more accidents like this one ”, Kravetz wrote along with a link to a request from the Change Argentina site.

For Miguel, however, the weapons of the criminals he faced were not replicas.: “I didn’t see much because my eye was bloody but the shots felt clear. There were four: two when I was approaching with the car and two that another threw me when I was fighting with him ”.

Miguel, his father-in-law and the rest of his family are still in shock. Caruso suffered a blow to the head and some scrapes from the fall and his son-in-law received four stitches to his head, as well as other injuries from the blows and cuts to his hand when he hit the glass of the crashed car.

“Luckily I can count it. Now the only thing that hurts me is the economic cost of fixing the car ”, says the man, who calculates that the composure of the vehicle will cost you almost 60% of the salary you receive in a single month as a driver in public transport. “The insurance is not going to pay me and it is what I use to go to work, which I do from midnight to 7 in the morning. I have two children, I need it ”.