Lack of remorse in Italy attack
Suspect in shooting of six Africans may have sought to avenge teen.
MILAN, Italy — A rightwing extremist suspected in the shooting rampage that wounded six Africans in central Italy was “lucid and determined, aware of what he had done” and exhibited no remorse for his actions, an Italian law enforcement official said Sunday.
Luca Traini, 28, remained jailed as police investigated him on multiple counts of attempted murder with the aggravating circumstance of “racial hatred” in the Saturday night attacks in the Italian city of Macerata.
The five men and one woman who were wounded in the two-hour drive-by shooting were from Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia and Mali, RAI state television said.
Italian authorities said they seized Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” other publications linked to Nazism and a f lag with a Celtic cross, a symbol commonly used by white supremacists, from Traini’s home Sunday.
Traini, who is Italian, was an unsuccessful candidate last year in a local election for the anti-migrant Northern League political party. Italy’s ANSA news agency quoted acquaintances as saying he previously had ties with the neo-fascist Forza Nuova and CasaPound parties.
Photographs released by police showed Traini with a neo-Nazi tattoo on his forehead and an Italian flag tied around his neck.
Col. Michele Roberti, a commander in the Carabinieri paramilitary police in Macerata, told Sky TG24 that Traini demonstrated no remorse for the rampage and “it’s 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. Her dismembered remains were found in two suitcases days after she left a drug rehab community.
Police said her bloody clothes, a receipt from a pharmacy where she bought a syringe and knives consistent with the crime were found in the Nigerian suspect’s apartment. Roberti ruled out any personal connection between Traini and the slain teen.