MADRID (Reuters) – Three people were killed and two injured after armed police intervened in a shootout sparked by an argument between a man and his father in central Spain on Wednesday, police said.
The gunman, his neighbour and a policeman were shot dead at a house on a road between the villages of Argamasilla de Calatrava and Villamayor de Calatrava near Ciudad Real, about 230 km (143 miles) south of Madrid, a police spokesperson told Reuters.
The incident stemmed from a domestic dispute between the 50-year-old shooter and his father, 81. When the neighbour tried to intervene, the gunman began shooting.
A special operations team from Ciudad Real was called out and shot the gunman.
Another policeman was shot in the foot while a third officer suffered unspecified gunshot wounds and was taken to hospital. The father escaped with some bruising, police said.
Crime, especially gun violence, is fairly rare in Spain. The country’s crime rate fell by 11% in 2021 from 2019, according to the government.
Excluding 2020, when incidents of crime were especially rare because of pandemic-induced lockdowns, 2021’s crime rate of 41.4 incidents per 1,000 people was the lowest since records began.
(Reporting by David Latona; writing by Charlie Devereux, editing by Andrei Khalip and Bernadette Baum)
