Man caught trying to steal two railway bridges in Alicante

A man was arrested in Teulada, Alicante, last week after he was caught red handed trying to dismantle two disused railway bridges to sell them on for scrap. Each of the iron bridges weighs more than 30 tons, EFE reports.

The suspect was at the site last Tuesday on a private property near the N-332, leading a team of workmen with two lorries and a crane, when he was arrested by the Civil Guard for attempted theft. Officers had previously checked with the land owner that no-one had been authorised to carry out the work.

An accomplice was arrested two days later for falsifying the documentation which had been presented to a dealer to scrap the 60 tons of metal.

The Civil Guard said in a press release on Monday that the two men had sold through their business almost 80 tons of scrap iron within the past month, which had been stolen in two robberies in Benidorm. They are also charged with the theft of a crane and six tons of construction material.