Boyfriend arrested after beaten-up woman found semi-conscious on Marbella beach

A 32-year-old man has been arrested in the Costa del Sol town of Marbella for an alleged crime of gender violence following an early morning incident on 11 August.

Local Police officers were patrolling on the main Avenida Severo Ochoa in the holiday resort at 3.40am, attending to a traffic accident, when they saw a woman trying to jump out of a moving car at speed.

The woman in the passenger seat screamed for help. She had the car door open and a leg outside the vehicle, which the officers identified as a black Seat Ibiza. The police were unable to chase the vehicle as they were still attending the traffic accident so they alerted other police patrol units by radio, as the car sped away in the Malaga direction, towards the Marbella arch.

The police had the help of a key resource to try and find the Seat vehicle: the traffic surveillance cameras that are controlled from the 092 Local Police control room and they also provided the search teams with the licence plate information.

One police patrol car reached the boundary with Mijas and turned around before the offcers spotted and stopped the Seat on the Río Real residential development. The driver was wearing blood-stained clothing and had swollen hands. The passenger seat was also covered in blood. Police asked the driver where the woman was who was seen trying to jump out of the car earlier. He told officers that he had left his girlfriend by the beach. Asked what had happened the driver only said, "I lost my mind".

Police combed the sand with flashlights and located, in a pitch black area, a semi-conscious woman who did not respond to the officers. Evidence at the scene suggested the woman, in her 30s, had been dragged from the car and abandoned. She was covered in bruises, had suffered a cut on her chin and there was blood on her clothes. She was immediately rushed to hospital with multiple injuries.

The 32-year-old Spanish man was detained for an alleged crime of gender violence. He tested positive for alcohol, although the rate was below the established legal minimum - which is 0.25, However, based on security camera footage, the arrested man was also accused of reckless driving.