Major questions are being asked of the authorities after a shocking incident in Las Palmas that saw a teenage girl suffer burns to 95% of her body at the hands of her boyfriend.
The 17-year-old had to be rushed to Spain’s biggest Burns Unit in Seville to be treated for the life-threatening injuries, sustained when she was dowsed in inflammable liquid and set on fire at 4am on Thursday morning in a derelict house in the Isleta district of the Gran Canaria capital.
It has now emerged that the man who allegedly set her on fire is a Moroccan who arrived in the Canaries illegally by boat in June and is due to be deported back to his country. According to local reports, he has been sent to a temporary facility in Las Palmas while his return is formalised and had struck up a relationship with the girl, who was well known to social services and had absconded from a local children’s home last Friday.
The alleged perpetrator was also admitted to hospital for smoke inhalation and has been placed police guard while the matter is investigated fully. Interviewed by officers on suspicion of attempted murder, he said the girl’s burns were accidental and were caused when «a mattress they were sleeping on caught fire».
The incident has prompted widespread calls for a probe into how the Moroccan, aged 20, was able to move freely in the early hours of the morning and was apparently squatting in the derelict house when he was subject to controls after arriving illegally. Calls have also been made to determine what measures were taken to locate the vulnerable girl after she ran away from the home nearly a week earlier.
According to media today, extra police have been deployed in the Isleta area to prevent a repeat of the violence seen in the town of Torre Pacheho in southern Spain last week when local youths took to the streets to seek revenge after an elderly man was brutally assaulted by a group of North African immigrants. Spain’s Interior Ministry deployed dozens of officers to keep locals and migrants apart after calls were made on social media to ‘defend the town’.
(Picture of derelict house in La Isleta)
