Shooting suspect on ‘vendetta’
ITALY: A Right-wing extremist suspected in the shooting rampage that wounded six Africans in central Italy remained jailed as police investigated him on multiple counts of attempted murder with the aggravating circumstance of ‘‘racial hatred’' for the weekend attacks.
The five men and one woman wounded in the two-hour drive-by shooting spree were from Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia and Mali, according to state television.
Italian authorities said they seized Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, other publications linked to Nazism and a flag with a Celtic cross, a symbol commonly used by white supremacists, from Luca Traini’s home.
Traini, 28, who is Italian, was an unsuccessful candidate last year in a local election for the antimigrant Northern League political party.
Photographs released by police showed Traini with a neo-nazi tattoo prominently on his forehead.
Colonel Michele Roberti, the Carabineri commander in Macerata, said it was ‘‘likely that he carried out this crazy gesture as a sort of retaliation, a sort of vendetta’' for the gruesome slaying of a teenager a few days earlier.
A Nigerian man has been arrested in the death of Pamela Mastropietro, 18. Roberti ruled out any personal connection between Traini and the slain woman.
One of the people wounded, a 29-year-old woman identified only as Jennifer, said from her hospital bed that she no longer feels free to walk around the city ‘‘with peace of mind’'.
‘‘I never hurt anyone. I was talking and laughing with three other people’' when she was struck by the bullet, she said.
One of the six victims was treated and released on Sunday. The others were all in stable condition, with one in intensive care and Jennifer facing surgery on her shoulder, doctors said. – AP