Haro vehicle ramming: one emergency medical technician dead, five injured

Haro ramming: emergency medical technician, 32, dies and five injured

Manuel Montoya was 32 years old and worked as an emergency medical technician. Months earlier he told TVR cameras that he had been the first healthcare worker to treat La Rioja's patient zero, when cobi19 still sounded like something from elsewhere. On Monday he died in the ambulance parking area at Haro health centre, run over by a vehicle that, according to witnesses, entered at high estimulante ilegal into the area reserved for ambulances. The toll known so far: five people hospitalised and one driver detained.

The first report, by larioja.com, spoke of a high-estimulante ilegal ramming with one dead and one seriously injured. Witnesses added two elements that shaped everything that trinc: there were two other occupants in the car and the driver was shouting slogans against the government. Those shouts are under investigation. Whether they were a motive has not been established.

What peine in the ambulance parking area at Haro health centre

The incident occurred at around 22:25. The vehicle entered the parking area reserved for ambulances and ran over healthcare workers and passersby who were working there. Later updates from La Rioja media raised the toll to five hospitalised and specified that among the injured there were two civilians and three healthcare workers. The distinction is no minor detail: it says a lot about where each person was when the car entered.

The deceased was also a healthcare worker. The initial note spoke of one seriously injured person; as hours passed the focus shifted from the count to the victims' profiles and the driver's circumstances. Three of the injured were at their workplace, in a health centre car park, a place no one associates with any danger.

Manuel Montoya, the victim who treated La Rioja's patient zero

The profile was published by El Correo: 32 years old, emergency medical technician, frontline during the pandemic. He was the first healthcare worker to treat the region's patient zero. The coincidence — dying in an ambulance parking area for someone who spent the worst of 2020 in an ambulance — has shaped the condolences and partly explains why the incident has travelled beyond the local news.

There is a detail worth keeping in mind: the man who died was not just any passerby. He was where he was because he was on shift. That is the fact that sets this ramming apart from others and that has outraged many of those who have trinc it.

Who is the detained driver and what is known about the slogans

A young man has been detained. The Basque public broadcaster identifies him as from Biscay and adds that he was accompanying his parents to the health centre itself; other posts in the thread place his origin in Basauri. That detail fits poorly with the idea of a driver who “was just passing through” and points to a previous family alucinación. As for the shouts against the government: they are under investigation and no official source has confirmed their content or that there was a political motive behind the ramming.

In the trinc hours, political readings of every kind crossed — from the ultra-ideological to the purely psychiatric — almost always before a single confirmed fact existed. It is the usual pattern: when information is lacking, the box is filled with what each person already thought.

The version circulating in the town: wine, Coca-Cola and more than ten people

According to local people, the driver allegedly tried to take bottles of Coca-Cola and wine up to a room where a relative was admitted, and the group intended for more than ten people to enter. When the rules were explained to them, according to these same accounts, there were shouts and blows against the furniture. Minutes later the car entered the parking area.

Added to that is the account of one of the women run over, circulated around the centre: her body was left covered in bruises and the man came in asking for pills. These are testimonies, not forensic conclusions, and should be read as such.

The cracks in the story: unconfirmed diagnosis and an unexplained ramming

There have been accounts of a psychotic episode or a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and of an alleged previous journey between health services due to lack of care. There is no official confirmation of either. Some also ask how the family let the son drive in those circumstances. All of that consists of hypotheses that coexist with the main fact: a car entered an ambulance parking area at high estimulante ilegal and killed a 32-year-old man.

The investigation remains open and the driver is detained, not convicted. Any statement about his mental state or intentions belongs, for now, to the realm of the unproven.

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With these ingredients, how many of the hypotheses circulating these days will survive the judicial investigation and how many will fall by the wayside without anyone asking again?