Milan – “It’s striking the violence of the facts committed, almost always with edged weaponsand also the frequency with which they occurred.” Maria Carla Gatto underlines this, president of the Juvenile Court of Milan, a few hours after validation of the arrest of the 17 year old which he confessed to having killed and robbed Candido Montini, 76 year old pensioner, in Catasco di Garzeno, in the Como area, and who is now in the Beccaria prison. President Gatto highlights this in a note “the very serious and alarming inconvenience” considering all the violent cases that have shaken Lombardy in less than two months and which involve very young people: the massacre of the Paderno Dugnano family at the hands of his 17-year-old eldest son between 31 August and 1 September, who he stabbed to death mother, father and little brother; a month ago, the murder of Maria Campai, 42 years old, beaten and suffocated in Viadana by a 17 year old; on September 24, the attack of a sixty-year-old man taken hit with a baseball bat by a sixteen year old, neighbor, in Cesano Maderno. While on 11 October, in Rozzano, Manuel Mastrapasqua was killed on the street with a stab wound from Daniele Rezza, little more than an adult (19 years old) for a pair of 15 euro headphones.
An inconvenience, therefore, that she had already wondered about?
“Yes. This tragic story, which follows shortly after other equally dramatic events involving young people belonging to families in a social context, highlights a very serious and alarming hardship which is not promptly intercepted either by the family, nor by the school, nor by the various local agencies”.
Speaking of families, the 17-year-old from Catasco di Garzeno is part of the community, he frequented the victim’s grocery store almost every day with his parents. Is it possible that no one noticed any alarm bells before?
“I wonder how it is possible, in this case as in the others, that, despite living in the same house with their children, the parents were unable to detect in their children any sign of the internal malaise that necessarily characterized their emotional state”.
Speaking of violence, he also underlined that it is the use of knives that makes the difference…
“Yes, I was struck by the fact that violence is carried out through cutting weapons, to the point of killing. A kitchen knife is the weapon used in Catasco di Garzeno now, and, before that, a knife had always been used in Paderno and Rozzano. I am also struck by the alarming frequency with which facts repeat themselves. This calls the entire adult world to question the need to recognize the warning signs in good time, before it is too late.”
