Two men died on Friday afternoon in Roldán, Torre Pacheco, and a number were left needing treatment for their injuries, after a car ploughed into the terrace of a local restaurant that was occupied by a number of diners. One of the fatalities was the driver of the vehicle while the other death was that of a customer, who was understood to be eating his lunch.
The circumstances, however, are far from clear as the vehicle driver, a young man between 25 and 30 years of age, according to witnesses, had stab wounds to the chest and blood on his face.
It is understood that, as a result of his injuries, the driver was not able to control his car and ended up crashing into the terrace on the Avenida de Murcia at more than 120 kilometres per hour-
Witnesses say that he lost control and has crashed at full speed into the tables and chairs on the terrace of the Roldán Indian restaurant, Honey’s Bar.
The driver of the car was traveling alone and apparently fleeing from a fight in the town of Lo Ferro in which he was badly injured.
Witnesses say that there were four customers sitting at two tables on the terrace, including the wife of the deceased client, who was sitting next to him, but who was miraculously unharmed.
The two other clients were both injured, one of them with a head injury and the other with a leg injury. Both were rushed to the Los Arcos Hospital in San Javier, although their injuries were not thought to be serious, according to police sources.
Firefighters from the Murcia Region Fire and Rescue Consortium, patrols from the Local Police and the Guardia Civil, as well as two mobile emergency units and two ambulances from the Emergency Management and Health Emergencies service were despatched to the site.
The restaurant manager said that, minutes before the accident, he had seen the car “driving around the area, from one place to another”, until it finally ran into the Terrace. “It didn’t stop until it collided with the house next door to the restaurant,” said the hotelier.
“Everything was normal, we were serving customers as usual when we heard the crash,” he added.
“It all happened so quickly, we were waiting for the food to be served and heard the car crash into the tables,” explained Alberto Rodríguez, who was sitting on a side terrace.
His wife, Deborah Rose, who is a nurse and was eating with him, tried to revive the customer who was hit by the vehicle, “but he was already dead, I couldn’t do anything,” she said as she burst into tears.
Mohamed Saadi, who lives in the block of flats next to the bar, explained that “I was at home and I heard a very loud bang, I went down scared to see what had happened and I found the boy in the car, covered with blood.”
Other witnesses described the scene as something from a “horror movie”.
According to sources, the driver of the car was of Moroccan origin, and the customer who died on the terrace, was South American.
