The aftermath of the beating he received last Friday, December 23rd are more than evident. In his 30 years as an ambulance technician, Toni González has suffered numerous insults and threats, just like the rest of his colleagues. He was even on sick leave for six months after he was run over by a motorcyclist at the beginning of the season because he did not want to wait for the ambulance to load the patient. It was in Cala de Bou, while the doctor and the nurse were attending to a child suffering from seizures in a home. “He said ‘Get off me, idiot, I’ll kill you!’ as he ran over me,” he recalls angrily. The motorcyclist broke his hip and escaped, but he was able to report him because a neighbor recognized the assailant.

He was still awaiting trial for that case when he was assaulted again, this time, it made him fear for his life and has exhausted the patience of his colleagues. Last year, 19 attacks on health or ambulance personnel were recorded in the Balearic Islands, 20% more than the previous year, but none of them reached the magnitude of last Friday’s attack.

González had been back on his post in the mobile ICU of Sant Antoni for three days when, at around 6:15pm, he got called to a home. The relatives of a 44-year-old mentally ill man had called the 061 switchboard to request assistance. As per protocol in cases of psychiatric patients, the ambulance must be assisted by the police

No police accompaniment

Upon receiving the service call, González asked about the presence of officers. “They tell me that the police aren’t going because the patient is calm,” González explains. He arrived with the ambulance at the home in the center of Sant Antoni, along with the doctor and the physician. Although they went together, they are from different departments. He, as a technician, is part of the public company Gestión sanitaria y asistencial de las Illes Balears (Gesaib), while his colleagues are employees of SAMU 061.

As the vehicle cut off the street, he again requested police presence. The nurse and the doctor went up to the second floor from where they had requested assistance and he decided to accompany them. The parents were there, both over 80 years old, and a woman who, because of her age, Gonzalez believed to be the patient’s sister. A local family, a lifelong Sant Antoni family. They told them that the patient had not been taking his treatment for a long time and was feeling strange. They did not see the patient in the room.

“Suddenly he appeared from a room in an agitated state. He kicked the doctor in the face and was going to attack her more,” he explains, still with fear in his eyes. González goes on to recount some nightmarish moments in detail that, between blows and stress, he believes lasted about ten minutes: to protect the doctor, he threw himself over the aggressor and fell on top of him, on the floor. “He was completely out of his mind and he’s a strong man,” González notes. Despite trying to hold him down, the patient kept kicking and punching him. The two female health workers escaped to the street to call for help. Despite their age, the parents joined in and started kicking González. The mother broke his nose with the toe of her shoe. If he tried to protect himself with his hands from the ground from those kicks, then the patient from the ground punched him again.

When he would again attempt to hold the patient’s arms to further immobilize him on the ground, he would receive bites to his fingers, belly or testicles and was defenseless against the kicks from the elderly parents. He had no escape. During the beating, he does not remember if the other woman in the family was present or hid. In any case, “she did nothing to help”. He also got to see the mother leave fleetingly inside the house and return with a sharp object that, from the floor, he could not tell “if it was a knife or a pair of scissors”.

Escape by any means necessary

“I thought they were going to kill me. I feared for my life,” he says. Fortunately for him, the nurse returned to the floor. She tugged at his vest to help him up. As they went down the stairs, the mother threw a bottle or vase that hit him in the back and an ashtray that hit him in the head. The police were not there yet. He locked himself in the cab of the ambulance and, from that moment on, his memories blurred. He knows that he was moved to the stretcher in the back and that there were two other ambulances to assist him and transfer him to the Can Misses Hospital.

The Policía Local and the Guardia Civil arrived, took the parents away, while the patient was handcuffed and transferred in another ambulance. Despite what he has suffered, the victim consoles himself with the fact that his reaction was due. “If I hadn’t been there in the middle, I don’t even want to imagine what they would have done to the doctor”