A young man was apprehended and beaten by residents of the Veguita de Galo neighborhood in Santiago de Cuba after he broke into a house armed with a machete, threatened a minor, and stole the cell phone of a doctor who lived in the property.
The incident occurred last Thursday at noon, at the intersection of 9th Street and Iglesias Street, and was shared on Facebook by independent journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada.
What outraged the community the most was that the thief was not a stranger, but a bread vendor who roamed the neighborhood daily and knew the houses, schedules, and families in the area.
He used that knowledge to his advantage. Noticing that the door of the house was open, he climbed the stairs and entered. Inside, he was taken by surprise by a child from the family, whom he threatened with a machete to intimidate before fleeing with the owner's cellphone, wrote Mayeta Labrada.
But he didn't get far. Neighbors from the area intercepted him before he could escape. Feeling cornered, he threw his phone and the machete to the ground. It didn't help at all.
According to an eyewitness, "they hit him just for the sake of it, not even the police could stop the people."
The phone was found by the neighbors on one of the streets where she tried to escape and was returned to the doctor.
The thief, identified in the video as the young man in the torn white sweater, fell into the hands of the neighbors before the authorities could take control of the situation. His health status and current whereabouts are unknown.
This episode adds to a growing pattern of vigilante justice in Santiago de Cuba, driven by frustration over police inaction and a perception of impunity. In the months prior, similar cases were reported in the neighborhoods of Agüero, Micro 1B, and Vista Hermosa, where neighbors detained and assaulted alleged thieves due to the delay or absence of police response.
The security crisis in Cuba intensified in 2025. The Cuban Observatory for Citizen Auditing documented 2,833 verified crimes, a 115% increase from 2024. Thefts topped the list with 1,536 cases, a 479% rise compared to 2023. Santiago de Cuba was the fourth most affected province, with 323 verified cases.
As Mayeta Labrada noted at the end of her report: "A community that feels alone in the face of crime does not wait for the police. It takes action. And what happened this Thursday in Veguita de Galo is the exact portrait of how far that desperation has gone."
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