Rural peace ruined by crime

For the 1'200 inhabitants of the sleepy rural village of Santa Eugenia, life may never be the same again after Thursday night's silence was shattered by a gang of youths who went on a rampage through the quaint Majorcan village. There was little the residents could do, the village does not even have a police station. As day broke yesterday, residents could talk about nothing else as they followed the trail of destruction through the village. Where the raiders came from nobody knows, but many suspect that they drove in by van, because the amount of goods that were stolen would not have fitted into a car. But the mystery to the midnight raid on Santa Eugenia does not end there. The owner of the local tobacconist, one of the targets, Jordi Merce, said “what is most curious about it all is that none of the locks have been forced. “When I turned up at my store this morning the bar across the door was slightly open. When I walked in I could see that candles had been lit to avoid the thieves being spotted by neighbours.” According to Merce's daughter, Catalina, cartons of cigarettes, telephone cards, postcards and cigarette papers were just some of the items stolen from the shop which was ransacked. She estimated that some two million pesetas worth of goods were missing.