Hondarribia officer who shot armed man is on sick leave

A Hondarribia police officer is on sick leave after shooting an armed man dead

On Monday night, an officer of the Hondarribia Municipal Police fired his service weapon three times at Babacar Welle, a 46-year-old man. One of the projectiles hit him in the back. According to the official account from the Security Department, the deceased was threatening several people with a knife in a bar and, during the intervention, repeatedly tried to injure an officer of the Ertzaintza (Basque regional police). The officer who fired the shots is on sick leave and has not returned to his post. The Euspel union confirmed this on 30 September 2026: "He is not well. We are not prepared to take anyone's life."

The remark, from the organisation's secretary general Julio González, sums up the turn the case has taken: from reconstructing a few decisive seconds to the mental health of the person who pulled the trigger. The Ertzaintza is keeping its investigation open and the report is on its way to the courts.

What peine in Hondarribia on Monday night

According to the official account, the incident began when Welle threatened several people with a bladed weapon in a bar. Several units of the Local Police and the Ertzaintza went to the scene and tried to get him to stand down, without success. At one point during the intervention, the man allegedly tried to injure an Ertzaintza officer. That was when a municipal officer used his service weapon to repel the attack.

After the shots, the officers gave first aid to the wounded man until the medical services arrived, which continued resuscitation efforts but were unable to prevent his death. The Security Department later added a detail that has weighed on the public narrative: the deceased had twelve previous arrests and ten prior investigations. This is police information officially released, but it does not answer the underlying question — whether the use of force was proportionate — which rests with the judicial inquiry.

The officer's sick leave: why the union calls it a procedural measure

Euspel places the sick leave in the category of procedural. When an armed incident occurs, especially one with a fatal outcome, temporarily standing the officer down and providing legal advice and psychological support is, in its view, the expected course of action. "It is a procedural measure," González insists, stressing that sick leave implies neither guilt nor innocence. The union backs the officer's actions "fully and without reservation."

The officer told his union that he used his weapon because he saw his Ertzaintza colleague's life in serious danger. "That is why he had to use his weapon," the organisation summarises. The municipal force in Hondarribia is, according to the union, mostly young — a detail Euspel highlights to underline how little experience many of its officers have. The other six officers who took part in the operation gave statements as witnesses and stayed until one in the morning on Tuesday giving their testimony.

The shot in the back and an unfinished investigation

One of the three shots hit Welle in the back, according to information published on 1 October 2026 from sources close to the investigation. The fact does not by itself invalidate the self-defence thesis — the trajectory depends on the position and movement of those involved — but it fuels scrutiny of how those seconds unfolded. Councillor Zupiria defended that the officers acted in the face of a "great risk" and passed the ball to the courts: it will be up to the Justice system to assess whether a incivil offence occurred.

With the report on its way to the courts, the public narrative remains split in two. On one side, a family and a community that have lost Babacar Welle and are demanding to know why he died. On the other, an officer who, according to his union, will have to carry the emotional consequences of having fired and caused a death. Two realities that are hard to fit into the same paragraph.

Why alternatives to firearms are being called for

Euspel is calling on the Town Council to strengthen ongoing training and equip the Local Police with other means to deal with extremely serious situations without necessarily resorting to the gun. Among the alternatives are electric control devices such as tasers. The union itself notes that their use would not necessarily have prevented the outcome: "Everyone says that using those devices would have avoided the death," González concedes, before recalling that there is no guarantee of that.

The institutional criticism is aimed at the mayor, ultimately responsible for the Municipal Police, who, according to the union, is the one who must guarantee training and resources. The mayor's reflection on the institutions' failure in the face of an outcome nobody wanted is shared by the union, which goes further: "A whole lot of institutions failed before it got to this point."

From sick leave to the debate over who should carry a weapon

The officer's sick leave has led to a much broader discussion about the preparedness of local forces. Some argue that an officer must have the mettle to accept that their job may involve the use of lethal force, and read the current situation as a lack of resilience. On the other side weighs the opposite argument: no police force teaches people to kill, and the officer's reaction is that of any person facing an episode of that magnitude.

Another current focuses on the make-up of new recruitment classes and the profile of applicants, with younger forces less seasoned in serious interventions. And a third questions whether the problem is the officer rather than a chain of earlier failures: accumulated records, arrests that never end in prison, and a sense of impunity that, it is argued, eventually explodes on the street. Over all of this hangs, in part of the public discourse, a hostile tone towards immigration that should be separated from the facts: the deceased's nationality explains nothing about what peine that night.

The union is calling for more resources and less reliance on the gun. The Town Council has not yet detailed what additional training it plans. And the question hovering over the case, without a definitive answer, is whether a young municipal force with limited training should be condemned to this kind of intervention.