Good Samaritan hit with €300 bill

A WOMAN in Fuengirola who tried to help two ‘drowning’ men at sea has been slapped with a €300 bill for her efforts.

The twenty-two-year-old woman told Diario Sur that she was walking with her mother in Fuengirola earlier this month when she spotted what she thought was two men on a floating mattress at sea, and who appeared to be in difficulty.

She contacted the police who waved away her concerns when the two men in the water responded to signals from police with their own torches. She described the attitude of the police as “dismissive” and “reluctant”.

“I wouldn’t have been able to sleep peacefully thinking they had died and I didn’t do anything,” she said.

When other people joined in and started to urge the police to do something, they eventually called the coastguard who sent a boat and a helicopter to the scene.

It was discovered that the two men were in fact fishermen in a canoe and were in no difficulty at all.

“I will now have to pay for the ship and the helicopter being sent out,” she told the paper. “In the end it’s the person who alerts (authorities) who suffers. Is it better to look the other way and pray to God they don’t drown? I wouldn’t do it. But the way I’m made, I would call again.”