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Sneaking cops arrest fugitive at pool
01:10 - Source: CNN

Story highlights

Andrew Moran fled his 2009 robbery trial, police say

He was arrested by a pool in southern Spain

His accused accomplice was arrested in Spain in 2011

CNN  — 

A British fugitive wanted for fleeing his 2009 trial on armed robbery charges was back in custody Sunday after a dramatic raid on a villa in southern Spain, British authorities announced Sunday.

Spanish police video of the raid shows Andrew Moran attempting to jump a poolside wall to escape officers during the Friday afternoon raid in Alicante, on the Mediterranean coast. Moran had been relaxing by the pool before the raid, Britain’s Serious Organised Crime Agency said.

Moran, 31, had been convicted in absentia of conspiracy to commit armed robbery for the 2005 holdup of a Royal Mail vehicle. A security guard was injured, and Moran and an accomplice got away with 25,000 pounds ($38,000), the agency said.

Moran was standing trial in Burnley, in northwestern England, in February 2009 when he attacked four security guards, vaulted out of the dock and escaped. He lived in Spain under a series of false identities, “frequently changing his appearance,” Matt Burton, the organized crime agency’s head of investigations, said in a statement announcing his capture.

Moran is scheduled to appear before a judge in Madrid to face an extradition request on Monday, the statement said. He had escaped an earlier arrest attempt, in November, by ramming police cars and driving off the wrong way down a highway.

His accomplice, Stephen Devalda, was arrested in Spain in 2011 in a joint operation between Spanish and British authorities and has been sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison.