Rob Horgan
POLICE are not currently looking for anyone in connection to the stabbing of a British family in Gibraltar this morning.
A family of four were found stabbed to death in Gibraltar at 11.35 this morning.
The family includes two girls, one four and the other just six weeks old.
The parents are believed to be a 31-year-old man from Liverpool, UK, and a 37-year-old woman.
Some confusion remains over her nationality with some reports suggesting she was Spanish, while others say she was Cuban.
The family are believed to have been visiting a friend in Gibraltar and had only been on the British enclave for a few days.
Two home office pathologists will fly out to Gibraltar tomorrow, to examine the bodies which are still at the scene.
“At this present moment in time, a full investigation is being conducted by officers of the Serious Crime Unit to establish the cause surrounding the untimely deaths of this young family and are encouraging anyone who maybe able to support the investigation to contact the Duty Officer of the Royal Gibraltar Police,” a Gibraltar police spokesman said.
“Presently, we are not looking for anyone involved in this very unfortunate event, but the investigation will be thorough and detailed drawing in on the expertise of other professionals.”
Police were called to the scene at a flat in Boschetti’s steps at 11am.
A friend of the family was reportedly heard knocking loudly on the property’s front door and shouting out to the family who had reportedly been visiting him.
He called the police when there was no response, and a canine squad and a doctor also arrived on the scene.
Chief Minister Fabian Picardo adjourned parliament upon hearing the news and held a minute’s silence.
He said in a statement: “As a husband and father, I – like no doubt all Gibraltarians and residents of Gibraltar – am in total shock to hear about this terrible crime.
“Gibraltarians are not accustomed to witness this type of incident in our peaceful and law-abiding community. Words will fail us all at a moment like this and all we can do is keep the victims and their families in our thoughts and put our full trust in the Rule of Law so that justice prevails.”
Gibraltar is not an “enclave”.
It is technically impossible:
(1) It is not completly surrounded by another country (it has a sea cost on three sides, and only a small border with Spain to the north).
(2) Gibraltar is not legally a part of any other country. While it may have a constitutional relationship with the UK, it is not a part of the UK. It is a distinct territory itself, and recognised as such by UN bodies, hence being on the ISO list of country codes, etc, having .gi domain names, etc.
Therefore, technically impossible to be an enclave.
@David, a family of four have been murdered including two babies, its a truly tragic and dark day in Gibraltar. And your worried about a word??? Get a grip and get a life you moron and have some respect! RIP to the two angels taken too soon
Nicholas – I do not appreciate the tone of your comment ‘get a grip’, ‘get a life’ etc. You obviously are accepting of sloppy standards, I am not.
Given the gravity of the event, I would expect people to put some thought into what they are writing, and not make silly mistakes.
Further, given the resulting discussion about the incident in the wider world -with limited familiarity with Gibraltar, I would consider the word ‘enclave’ could mislead people (who understand the meaning of the word) about the jurisdictional independence of Gibraltar and the resulting investigation.
For example, I’ve already seen elsewhere comment such as ‘will this be investigated by Spanish police?’, ‘do they have detectives in Gibraltar or just street bobbies and fly them in form London?’ – all of which are easy questions to answer, but if reports were accurate and not misleading might help people better understandings from the word go.
Finally, and quite simply, accuracy matters. Especially in a report that is subject to edit and revision over the course of the day.
N.b. Please keep religion out of this – ‘angles’, etc.
Four people are dead, I think an argument on whether Gib in an enclave or not is in poor taste and slightly irrelevant.
David, given the gravity of this awful event do you think maybe that just for once these distinctions aren’t really that important.
David: Attention-seeking pedants have no place in a situation such as this. Crawl back under your stone.
stefanjo: erm attention seaking? I made a comment about a factual error in an article. And it is not a question of simply being pedantic, as the word used is not just legally incorrect, I consider that it has the potential to be misleading. Many people reading this story will not be that familiar with Gibraltar, I’d be concerned about giving them an erroneous starting point, creating an obstacle to understanding.
You are the person who has chosen to have a discussion about it and to comment further upon it, not me. The point made I made was valid and self contained, you could have just let it stand as a simply footnote clarification to the text in the story.
As for your ‘under your stone’ comment, I’m not the person who has resorted to personal insults. As I said, I posted a clarification about terminology in the story. I’m not looking to have a debate about it.
Practice what you preach David, your accuracy is not too good either, ‘a sea cost’, ‘angles’, what David, this is poor English, and you may confuse people to what you are saying, tut tut.
Robert – that is a different type of error (typographical – i.e. missing the ‘a’ in ‘coast’, the ‘el’ letter order in ‘angels’). While naturally such typographical errors (and there are a couple of others as well) are undesireable, I personally do not get anywhere near as concerned about them as factual errors (such as terminology).
Additionally, I’m not the person publishing a news article.
– Having said that I am generally not that concerned about typographical errors, in multi langauge environments (which is certainly the situation in southern Iberia) there is actually a good reason to be more far concerned about typographical errors than you would be in larger predominant single-language areas. That is that they affect people using automatic translation software in their webbrowser.
For that reason, if it were possible to edit posted comments, I would correct them … but alas it isn’t possible to edit comments.
Well David, so concerned about a word, not even a mention about these murdered people especially the 2 children.
Ken – I posted about a single topic. People interacted with me regarding that point, I stayed on the topic of that discussion.
As I do not know anything further about the people who have died, nor am I involved in the investigation, I don’t really have anything to add to those aspects of the report.
It depends whether you want loads of people posting “isn’t it sad” type posts, obviously it is … but they don’t really add much or interact/engage with the article content. I prefer a better signal to noise ratio.
Shocking and very sad. What a monstrous act to commit… the murder of two innocent children. Best wishes to the RGP who have been the subject of much criticism of late and now have a very grim and difficult task to perform.
David – i bet you’re an absolute hoot at a party!Redbull needed to read your posts! Poor, poor children:(