British man killed by gunfire on Spain’s Costa Blanca as police investigate connections to an increasing surge of gang-related violence

Local police are said to have been tipped off by friends of the victim that “something serious” had happened to him and found his bloodied body after going to the property flagged up to them. Civil Guard detectives are understood to be treating it as a drugs-related crime. No arrests have yet taken place.

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In the botched assassination attempt on December 11, around 15 bullets were reportedly fired at a 32-year-old British man's vehicle in a residential area of Orihuela Costa called Lomas de Cabo Roig. The victim was rushed to Torrevieja University Hospital and admitted to an intensive care ward. 

The man targeted was later identified locally as one of the two Brits arrested and still being investigated over an armed robbery last year at a cannabis club in nearby San Fulgencio. He had been allowed to leave prison on bail around a fortnight before he was targeted, nearly seven months after being remanded in custody following his arrest in April when he allegedly tried to escape police by taking an elderly couple hostage in their own homes.

Civil Guard detectives are investigating that shooting as a probable settling of scores between rival gangs.

In May an Irishman was critically injured after being shot in the head close to a nearby shopping centre called La Zenia Boulevard. Two suspects were arrested a fortnight later on suspicion of the attempted murder.

In June a second 29-year-old Irishman was stabbed in the neck from behind as he was having a pee near the same shopping centre and left needing an emergency life-saving operation. A 58-year-old Irishman was arrested over the knife attack in July.

On January 7 the body of Belfast-born father-of-one John George was found in an orchard in Rojales near Torrevieja after anguished appeals by his family following his disappearance the previous month.

Two men were arrested and are currently on bail, including suspected killer Johnny Smyth, also from Belfast. Despite being held on an international arrest warrant in March at an Airbnb in northern Portugal after fleeing his Costa Blanca expat home and being extradited to Spain the following month, Smyth was told he could leave his remand cell earlier this month after paying EUROS 100,000 bail.

Smyth’s Only Fans model wife Madison, 21, was released from custody the same day her partner was set free following a second Costa Blanca arrest in just over three months.

She spent ten days behind bars herself in September following her first arrest after cops pulled over her Audi A5 Cabrio and discovered nearly a kilo of crystal meth and 30 grams of cannabis resin inside, before paying EUROS 20,000 to get out of jail as part of a conditional release.