Date Published: 06/11/2019
ARCHIVED - Mazarrón bin burner strikes again
ARCHIVED ARTICLE Somebody thinks it's funny to destroy public facilities
The Mazarrón bin burner has struck again!
In July the municipality of Mazarrón was plagued by a bin burner who destroyed five sets of bins and recycling containers in just one night of bin burning frenzy, costing the council more than 15,000 euros and upsetting quite a few residents in the process.
It now appears that the bin burner could be back in action, with fires set in the El Alamillo Urbanisation on Halloween night which destroyed a bench as well as nearby recycling containers, and the previous week another fire in the Playasol area of Puerto de Mazarrón alongside the artisan bread bakery and the Colegio Manuela Romero.
Setting fire to bins and recycling containers seems to be a growing trend across the region; in Murcia city more than 200 containers have been destroyed so far this year at a cost of 200,000 euros, Cieza has lost 16,000 euros worth of containers at the hands of an arsonist and Molina de Segura has also been targeted by bin burners during the last few days.On Halloween night Puerto Lumbreras also lost 30,000 euros worth of bins when somebody set a succession of fires in the town centre.
Police have increased their vigilance in many areas, but the burners always seem to strike in the middle of the night when police resources are at minimum levels and as the burnings are generally given coverage in the Spanish language media, the trend seems to be "spreading like wildfire" for want of a better description.
Generally the act of burning bins, an easy target which yields spectacular results, is believed to be the work of young people, but the regional Spanish press has reported this week that a 74 year old man living in Murcia city was arrested after setting light to several containers. In his case, the paper reports his own wife as saying that the arsonist in question "wasn´t right in the head" an opinion shared by close neighbours who said that he "liked to shout his mouth off after a couple of drinks", and described him as "conflictive", local bar owners preferring a more peaceful life having banned him completely from their premises.
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