In the property where his wife and two minor children lived, and when he was in his pajamas. The National Police arrested Gregorio Navas Hernández, 37, at dawn this Tuesday in the Madrid town of Móstoles (211,000 inhabitants), a criminal specialized in robberies through the security system. landing ―using vehicles as battering rams against the windows of luxury stores to steal merchandise― classified as “very dangerous and violent” and which last July was included on the list of the 10 most dangerous criminals who could be hidden in Spain within a campaign launched by the Ministry of the Interior to request citizen collaboration to locate it.
With him, there are already three fugitives from that relationship who have been captured. Days after the list was released Jonathan Montoya Rendón, a hitman who participated in a murder in a hospital in the capital, felland at the beginning of October Domingos Manuel Pinto Coelho was arrested in Brazil, accused of sexually assaulting his daughter for years.
Navas Hernández – of whom in that campaign it was highlighted that five legal claims were in force against him – has more than 20 records for crimes of robbery with force, injuries, against road safety, against traffic safety, illicit association, forgery documentary, vehicle theft and attack against a law enforcement agent and was considered one of the few aluniceros historical figures that remained to be stopped, although currently their main criminal activity was car theft, according to detailed police sources. In prison for some of these events, his whereabouts were unknown since 2021 after not returning to the Madrid III Penitentiary Center, in the town of Valdemoro, after taking advantage of a prison permit to break his sentence.
Since then, he had been involved in at least one violent incident again. Specifically, last June, shortly before its inclusion on the most wanted list. It was in Sonseca (Toledo), when he was identified when he was in a mechanical workshop by a Civil Guard patrol. Navas Hernández resisted arrest until he managed to escape from the agents and get into his vehicle with which he fled after running over the members of the armed institute, who suffered various injuries. The investigations revealed that he was then hiding in an empty chalet in the town that he had squatted.
After that violent incident, the Fugitive Location Section of the National Police decided to include him on the list of the 10 most wanted criminals. According to police sources, the investigations were then directed towards the home occupied by his family in Móstoles, due to the conviction that Navas Hernández would follow a pattern of behavior common among fugitives that leads them to try to come into contact with his family. According to these sources, the information received from citizens who responded to the collaboration campaign was “important”, although they admit that in this case “it has not been key.” “Here police experience and, above all, patience have counted more,” they add.
This resulted in long surveillance in front of the family home where they suspected that he was either already hiding or might try to go. During these discreet checks around the property, the agents observed how the wife and teenage children adopted various counter-surveillance measures with the intention of detecting, precisely, the presence of the police in the vicinity. They had even installed a security camera on the terrace facing the street for the same purpose, as detailed by the Ministry of the Interior in a note.
Finally, the wait paid off last Monday morning, when the agents observed a man enter the building who, despite trying to hide his face with a mask, hat and glasses, was identified as Navas Hernández. From that moment, and until the judge on duty authorized entry into the home to proceed with his arrest, the police placed extreme surveillance on the property so that he would not escape again. Finally, in the early hours of this Tuesday, the Police broke down the door of the house and entered the house to arrest him. By the time they put on the handcuffs and put an end to three years on the run, I was still in my pajamas.
