Robbery victim's injured hand

The number of emergency-room visits by patients who said they had been mugged increased by nearly 400 percent during the Christmas holidays at Tijuana General Hospital, according to a doctor who works there.

In an interview published December 31 by the Baja California daily El Mexicano, Dr. Roberto Sanabia Orejean, an ER physician at the state-run hospital, was quoted as saying that during most of the year, about two patients a week come in to the emergency room with injuries sustained during a robbery, while during the holidays that number soars to as many as two patients a day.

It is typical, he said, for the number of patients with injuries from robberies —particularly from punches, kicks and stabs — to go way up during the holiday period.

Most of the injuries are not serious, Dr. Sanabia told the newspaper, but occasionally a patient arrives with severe wounds, usually patients hurt during a street robbery gone bad or while trying to withdraw money from an ATM. Some of the more serious injuries were sustained by those who were physically forced out of their vehicles during an assault, he said.

Most of the victims are “men of productive age,” he said, who are carrying an unusually large amount of cash with them because of holiday bonuses from work or because they are on their way to shop for Christmas presents.