Brutal attack by piranhas on an Argentinian couple in a shopping center in Chile: “People filmed us, nobody did anything to help us”

The cries are heartbreaking and the despair is total. “Son of a bitch….noooo. Stop, please. For for”we hear him shouting Ana Solomon at the door of a shopping center in Viña del Mar while her husband was attacked by a gang of teenagers in view of robbery. The video, filmed by a passerby, went viral and also outraged by viewers’ lack of empathy and solidarity with the victims.

The event occurred on Tuesday 14, around 4:30 p.m., in the Marina Arauco Shopping Center, located in the Valparaíso region. It is one of the areas most visited by Argentine tourists who come to this country to spend their holidays. And this is exactly what this Cordovan couple had done, seduced by “the coolness of this city in summer”, without realizing that they would be involved in a dramatic situation of insecurity.

“The mall has two blocks and is separated by a street. It can be crossed by a bridge, which connects the sectors, or on foot. We chose to do it on foot. We wanted to go to the Apple Store, which is across the street, and we just heard an explosion that caught our attention,” he said. Ariel Mansilla A GlobeLiveMediaalluding to the broken window of the Ripley’s store by a group of vandals, mostly teenagers.

“When we see that these young people start fighting with the security guards, my wife yells at me. ‘let’s go inside’. We took two steps and I felt a first blow in the neck. They attacked me from behind. While one was hitting the gold chain I was wearing, the other was hitting my neck again to unsettle me. Seeing that one of them was trying to run away with my chain, I kicked him and he fell. And that’s when the aggression from the rest of the group started towards me and towards my wife, who kept screaming and asking for help,” Ariel said of the violence. piranha attack who suffered in broad daylight. “She was also kicked in the abdominal area and in the hip. It was terrible,” he recalls.

Despite all the resistance offered, the young men achieved their objective and fled with the gold chain. “Fortunately, we had our cell phones and documents in our pockets,” said the man, who was left with an incomplete fracture of his right thumb, a sprained left hand, a sprained left ankle and injuries. bruises all over the body.

“Since they saw my husband tall and he fought back from the start, there was a time when it looked like 10 jackals against two prey. They didn’t expect us to fight back,” Ana remarked.

But what gave him the most powerlessness was that at the time of the event there were more than 25 people watching them idly and 4 security guards from the shopping center within four meters. “Nobody intervened to defend us. We were left unprotected as people filmed us and took pictures with their cellphones,” he was indignant. Meanwhile, more and more people joined in hitting them. “Since there were so many people around us, we couldn’t tell who the good guys and the bad guys were. I was paralyzed with fear,” Ana admitted.

“There is something Chileans should review as a society. Although we also have insecurity events in our country, someone usually helps you; especially if you are alone in the street. But It happened to us in a mall. I never imagined that something like this could happen to us,” the woman lamented.

After the attack was over and the assailants fled via North 14th Street, which is next to the mall, two elderly people came to help them. “After a while, a paramedic from the mall arrived and he was the one who asked the guards to walk us to the car we had left in the parking lot,” he said.

Although they initially decided not to file a complaint, when they arrived at the hotel, the manager asked them to do so because It was not the first time that something like this had happened against tourists and that their testimony could be used to reinforce the police presence in the area.

“We have come to Chile several times to spend the summer and we have always told everyone that this country is very safe. But now we are told that a lot has changed in the last three years with the new government and that the police are very limited in their actions against criminals“, said Ana. “They say that the law no longer protects them to work and many have decided to quit by force,” she added.

Due to the viralization of the videos of the attack, the news was broadcast practically on a national television channel in the Chilean media and the carabinieri came to the hotel to take their complaint.

“Yesterday, even, the manager of the shopping center came to show his solidarity to us and to the people of the Ministry of Tourism and the town hall of Viña del Mar. They apologized to us on behalf of the city.”, concluded the woman, still shocked by what happened. And he saved that at least the authorities contacted them to show their faces and commit to working so that this does not happen again.

So far no one has been arrested for what happened.

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