Agustín David Pascual Jove

Description

An anonymous caller phoned the Municipal Police of Vitoria warning that a bomb had been planted on the rail line. A Civil Guard bomb disposal squad, escorted by a patrol from the Rural Action Group and another unit from the Civil Guard station in Alegría, went to the scene. The killers had placed a decoy device on the rails and hidden a second bomb on a path surrounded by bushes and at some distance from the decoy. A passenger train was halted on the track, while the specialists determined whether or not the bomb was real.

As they approached the site of the supposed bomb, inspecting the track as they went, one of the officers tripped over a thin piece of fishing line hidden in the undergrowth which triggered the detonator and set off a booby trap on the embankment, which contained around eight kilograms of Goma-2. Eight civil guards were caught in the powerful explosion. Agustín David Pascual Jove was killed instantly. His colleagues Victoriano Collado Arribas and Sergeant José Luis Veiga Pérez were also killed.

In 2009, ETA employed the same method in Hernani. Fortunately, on that occasion, none of the officers from the Basque police were killed.

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