It was 10 p.m. when a subway employee left the Hospitales station on line H. First he signed out and then went to the locker room to change his clothes.
He went back to greet his partner, who was left alone in front of the ticket office, and to look for his phone charger.
He did not imagine that the same cable would be used to
tie him up in a robbery that was surprising both for the lack of control
and for the information that the assailants had.
It is that in that changing of the guard two thieves
with their faces covered
broke into the ticket office.
They pushed the one who came out and kicked them in the back to make them stay still.
As they indicated to
Clarín,
at that time there were no policemen, custodians or guards from the service concessionaire company to take care of the passengers, much less the employees.
The two thieves had their faces covered with masks and hoods.
They beat the workers and tied their hands with a rope.
One had his legs immobilized with the charger cable from his own cell phone.
With time and without anyone noticing what was happening,
they worked with a grinder for -at least- 15 minutes.
It was this Sunday at the head station of line H,
a few meters from the Churruca Hospital.
With a grinder, they robbed the ticket office at the Hospitales station on the H subway.
Neither the sparks, nor the smell, nor the deafening noise of the tool against the metal of the safe deposit box in the empty station served to prevent anyone from imagining that a robbery was taking place inside the ticket office
.
On average, some 140,000 passengers use line H, especially on business days and hours.
On Sundays, the last unit leaves the header at 10:49 p.m., meaning that
there were still passengers waiting
to travel and others who came down from the formations while the thieves forced the safe.
The two robbers, one "older and the other younger", were
armed.
"I arrived half an hour after everything that happened and there was still a burning smell, how come nobody noticed?" asked a subway employee who arrived at the scene shortly after what happened.
"Effectives of the 4A Neighborhood Police Station moved to the Hospitales del Subte Station, on Almafuerte Avenue at 300, after two employees of the ticket office area reported that two armed robbers surprised them at gunpoint, tied them up and
then
stole money from a safe after forcing it with a grinder," police sources confirmed to
Clarín.
The investigation of the facts was left in the hands of the Prosecutor's Office No. 7 in charge of Mónica Cuñarro.
She labeled the cause as
"armed robbery."
In principle, the Subte division of the City Police, which is in charge of the custody of the stations, intervened, but the prosecutor Cuñarro ordered that the expertise be carried out by the robbery and theft Division of the same force.
Sources consulted by
Clarín
confirmed that the collection of the ticket offices
is only withdrawn once a week.
Last Tuesday was the last time they had withdrawn the money collected, mainly from
passengers who carry the SUBE card to travel on public transport.
Therefore, one of the
hypotheses
that is handled is that "the data" of the collection and the lack of vigilance has been provided by someone who knows the operation.
Through a statement, the Trade Union Association of Subway and Premetro Workers (Agysyp) repudiated the fact: "From our union we have denounced these issues (of insecurity)
in our work
countless times ," they assured.
"We have unsuccessfully attended various meetings with the City Government and the Emova company, without having any results in the face of these events that are increasing in number and severity. Subway workers are on alert in the face of this serious situation and we
demand urgently an immediate response",
they closed.
The truth is that, when asked by this newspaper, from the union, they reported that "400 jobs are missing since the pandemic" and blamed the company for that failure.
"If there had been three employees, it would not have been possible to carry out the theft without anyone notifying them. If
the missing 400 workers
were there, a better service would be provided, the hours of exposure to asbestos could be reduced, it would improve in a lot of situations that we have been denouncing. Everything is an explosive combo," they argued.
Since last month, the subway workers have been carrying out forceful measures to demand the reduction of the working day and the deforestation of the trains.
Now they added the claim for this fact of insecurity.
SC
look too
Due to a measure of force, line D did not work during the first two hours of this Wednesday
