Muay Thai enthusiast became aggressive following arrest for drink driving
A truck driver, who “practices martial arts”, bit off the end of the nose of a GNR agent involved in arresting him in the early hours of Friday morning.
Remanded in custody, reports today claim Manuel Ramos could lose custody of his children as a result of this attack.
The injured GNR agent, 42-year-old Carlos Dias, remains in hospital where he has undergone reconstructive surgery for his mutilated nose.
President Marcelo has reportedly been in touch with agent Dias, “impressed by the agent’s sang froid in that even injured, he managed to handcuff his aggressor”, writes Correio da Manhã.
The dismal story played out in Beja in the very early hours of Friday morning, when Manuel Ramos and his wife were stopped by police in the car Ramos was driving. Inside were the couple’s two young children. Both parents were over the alcohol limit. Indeed, this is apparently the reason why Manuel Ramos’ wife was not driving.
The family was taken to the local GNR police station, to undergo further tests to establish the limit of alcohol in Ramos’ blood. It was here that the truck driver “began kicking the agent, knocking him down”.
While Carlos Dias was on the ground, Ramos bit the agent’s nose “with great violence”, says CM.
Two other GNR staff members were “equally attacked”.
Once Ramos was restrained and in police cells, a process was opened with child protection services.
Both Ramos and his wife are “targets” of the process, says CM, “as they were both in a drunken state, driving through the streets of Beja at 3.30am” with two young children, aged two and five years old, ostensibly ‘in their care’.
The couple risk being found guilty of the crime of “child exposure and abandonment”, which at worst could see one (or even both) lose custody of them.
In the first two weeks of January, there have already been 18 crimes involving violence against police agents, writes CM – three of them incidents where the agents were run over; the most recent of which also happened on Friday: a driver trying to avoid an operation STOP drove over the foot of a policeman “who needed to be treated (as a result) in hospital”. The driver was later arrested.
GNR associations are now calling for an “urgent revision of the penal code” to increase penalties for these kinds of attacks, stressing the profession is one that carries “serious risks on all levels” every day.
