A Cuban teacher known on TikTok as @la_proferepa published a video in which she denounces the armed robbery suffered by her 21-year-old son in the Versalles neighborhood of Pinar del Río, where a criminal put a knife to her best friend's neck to demand the key to his scooter.
According to the professor, the incident occurred on Wednesday night in front of the café "Las Cuatro Esquinas," at the corner of 190 and 45, when the young man and his friend — a boy with mobility issues since birth, who is also the godfather of his wedding — had gone out to buy pizzas in the neighborhood.
"A criminal came, held a knife to my son's neck, and said: if you don’t give me the motorcycle, if you don’t give me the key that I know you have, I'm going to kill you," she recounted, clearly shaken.
To protect his friend, the son handed over the keys without resistance, and the assailant fled with the vehicle.
The teacher described her son as "a hardworking, responsible, well-mannered young man, who doesn't associate with the wrong crowd, doesn't engage in vices, and everyone congratulates me on having such a well-educated son at twenty-one."
The video, lasting two minutes and 13 seconds, arrived at a particularly difficult time for the woman: that same day, she had traveled urgently to Pinar del Río because her mother experienced a severe bout of diarrhea that required hospitalization and intravenous hydration. She made the trip with her two grandchildren in tow, as she takes care of them while her daughter works late into the night.
In that context of accumulated adversities, the professor directed a straightforward question to the authorities: "How much longer is this going to last? Power outages? Isn't there a patrol to prevent these things from happening?"
His complaint highlights the lack of police patrols in the area where the assault took place, a grievance echoed in similar testimonies from other provinces.
The case adds to a documented pattern of violent bike thefts involving bladed weapons in Cuba, with incidents reported in Las Tunas, Havana, Matanzas, and now Pinar del Río during 2026.
In April, a 13-year-old boy was attacked with a knife to his neck to steal his bicycle in Cárdenas, Matanzas, in an incident with almost identical characteristics.
The Cuban Observatory of Citizen Audits (OCAC) recorded 2,833 verified crimes in 2025, a 115% increase compared to 2024 and a 337% increase compared to 2023, with thefts being the most common crime at 1,536 cases.
In Pinar del Río, the phenomenon has judicial precedents: in February 2025, eight Cubans were sentenced to up to 15 years in prison for vehicle theft in the municipalities of Consolación del Sur and the provincial capital.
The teacher, who in May starred in a viral video dancing with her students at a pre-university school that garnered over 181,000 views, concluded her statement with a phrase that encapsulates the feelings of thousands of Cubans: "So many things one feels that this country, which I love so much, is falling apart."
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