I suspect there is more to the story however what happened to them doesn't surprise me. In a city the size of BA with its fair share of poverty it's statistically bound to happen some time but I'd say it's a pretty rare event on the whole.
Although I feel relatively safe in BA I certainly wouldn't walk its streets at 3am in the morning especially if I'd had a few too many drinks and made it known I was a foreigner. Ditto for most cities I've visited around the world.....that's the time when the dodgy characters are out and about.

Its clear that action hungry visitors on the prowl will be more prone to incidents, but as other point out here, normal tourists with a less "aggressive" appetite should be OK as long as the least common of all senses is used appropriately.

Quite agree on the whole.

All in all, I'd probably feel more comfortable walking around much of BA at 3am than a lot of other cities (still not that I'd recommend it, of course)... that's just about the time all the locals are going out to the boliches, so unless you've wandered into the wrong areas, there are bound to be enough people in the streets that odds are still against anything serious happening. What's more, in the summer, anyway, the sun will be rising by the time the dance clubs are quieting down, so daylight works in one's favor on the way back from the night as well. I don't go out to the clubs much anymore, but between streets being lively at 3am, and sun coming out as nightclubs shut down, when I did go out, I always remember feeling at least as safe most nights out here as I used to in New York!

But there are also areas I'd be a bit careful most any time of day... And at night I've been inside some places that I'd say were pretty dodgy and made me feel like I had to leave before something bad happened. I've gotten the same feeling at times in Spain, London and France, though, so certainly things can happen pretty much anywhere.

The InterContinental is my go-to hotel when I'm in BA, having stayed there multiple times. The area is a bit dodgy, but mostly because it appears to be a business district and there's no life on the street after business hours or on the weekend. It doesn't seem inherently like an unsafe neighborhood.

At that time of night, I wouldn't be walking down the street - I'd take a cab.

Well, it happened to us (our kids included) four years ago in La Plata.

What a disturbing image