Tiago Grila, now identified by police, claims he has received “many threats”
A ‘famous Portuguese influencer’ has become even more notorious in recent days, following his admission in a podcast that he had hit a pedestrian on a rainy day in Amadora, and ‘kept driving’.
Tiago Grila described the situation, openly laughing with his podcast host, after he was asked for “a secret that you have never talked about”
What he was thinking when he answered, no one can imagine: did he forget that the podcast would be watched by hundreds, if not thousands, of ‘fans’/ followers? Grila apparently has 64,000 ‘followers’ on social media…
Fast forward a few days, and Grila’s supposed victim has been discovered: a young mother who lives with the consequences of the hit-and-run, to the extent that she is in constant pain and cannot work.
Suffice it to say, the minute the heat started bearing down on him, Grila changed his story, saying the whole ‘confession’ had been an exercise in marketing: he is an innocent man, and was not been involved in this accident in any way, shape or form, in spite of the fact that the details uncannily correspond to everything he described in the podcast: a rainy day; a hill close to the Amadora ‘Bingo’, a woman hit by a car, the driver of which did not stop.
Even worse, he told his podcast host that he “didn’t see” the woman before he hit her, as he was “looking at (his) mobile phone”…
Grila has been rapidly posting as this story refuses to let him go. Today’s tabloid Correio da Manhã describes him posing next to a PSP police car yesterday, saying: “I am tranquil. It is normal. The police know where I am” – but now it appears, they don’t. In fact no one knows at this point where Grila is: just that he posted a number of videos on Tik Tok this morning from Lisbon airport, saying that “due to questions of security” and the fact that he had received “many threats”, he was going on some “little holidays” until this situation “has been resolved”.
According to Observador, Grila has stressed: “Before they start saying ‘you ran away’, ‘you can’t leave the country’… I left a power of attorney”.
Everything points to the influencer flying to Luanda, Angola. Some would say Angola might not be a number one choice for someone concerned about their own security, but as so little of this story has made any sense from the outset, few will be arguing this point.
For now, the famous influencer will be influencing (or perhaps not) from another country.
Meantime, a legal source has told SIC Notícias that Grila could face the crimes of ‘omission to provide help’ and ‘negligent offence to physical integrity’ – both of which carry maximum penalties of two years in jail.
