Three Men Handed Themselves In Over the Stray Bullet That Hit a Swedish Tourist on Rua Augusta
All three face attempted homicide, and investigators have not established which of them fired. One was detained the day after the shooting in August and released on twice-weekly reporting.
Three men suspected of firing the shot that struck a Swedish tourist on Lisbon's Rua Augusta last month were detained on Tuesday evening. All three are being treated as suspects in an attempted homicide, and investigators have not established which of them pulled the trigger.
The detentions were first reported by Publico and confirmed by Noticias ao Minuto with a source at the Policia Judiciaria. According to that account, the men handed themselves in to the authorities after the PJ searched their homes and found them absent.
What happened on 10 August
The woman, a Swedish visitor in her forties, was buying pasteis de nata in a pastelaria on Rua Augusta, the pedestrian spine of the Baixa and one of the busiest streets in the country. She was hit in the abdomen by a stray bullet and taken by INEM to Hospital Sao Jose. She was discharged the following day and returned to Sweden, where the bullet was to be removed.
The shot was not aimed at her. It came out of an argument between rival groups; one man drew a small-calibre pistol, fired at his rival and missed. Earlier reporting placed the dispute among groups selling louro prensado, the pressed bay leaf sold to tourists as cannabis, a trade the Baixa has struggled to police for years precisely because the product is not a controlled substance.
An arrest in August that did not hold
One of the suspects was detained the day after the shooting and released. A source at the PSP national directorate told Noticias ao Minuto at the time that he had been given a coercive measure of twice-weekly reporting to police, and that the detention had in fact been made in a domestic violence case rather than for the shooting.
The mayor of Lisbon reacted to that release on 11 August by calling it "unacceptable" on X. In the days that followed, the Ministry of Internal Administration announced that policing would be reinforced in the areas of the city with the heaviest concentration of tourists.
Moedas returns to the subject
By coincidence of timing, Carlos Moedas spent part of Tuesday evening on exactly this theme, at a meeting of the Lisbon Municipal Assembly. Presenting the council's work between June and August, he said he had moved from being worried about security in the city to being "alarmed by many situations", and asked that the subject be taken out of party politics: "There is no ideology here, there is people's safety."
His central figure was a comparison. Between 2010 and 2026 the population of Lisbon grew by 109,000 people, he said, while the city lost 2,000 police officers, leaving roughly 6,000 PSP officers. He also confirmed that the reinforcement promised by the government in May has not arrived: "We still do not have the 100 municipal police, nor the 200 PSP." He said he believed the government would deliver this year.
Moedas listed the council's own spending on video surveillance, the refurbishment of six police stations and the search for housing for officers, including in the former Presidency of the Council of Ministers building, which the government has donated to the city and whose transfer he said would be signed "within days".
On the Rua Augusta case, he was direct. When somebody is shot in the Baixa, he said, the person who fired "cannot remain at liberty".
