{"id":1034,"date":"2018-02-06T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/?p=1034"},"modified":"2018-02-10T13:25:25","modified_gmt":"2018-02-10T12:25:25","slug":"a-gruesome-murder-a-hate-filled-shooting-rampage-and-a-reckoning-with-immigration-before-italy-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/?p=1034","title":{"rendered":"A gruesome murder. A hate-filled shooting rampage. And a reckoning with immigration before Italy votes."},"content":{"rendered":"

Accustomed to peace, the Italian city of Macerata has been the scene of horrific violence.<\/p>\n

by Griff Witte and Stefano Pitrelli, The Washington Post<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"<\/div>\n

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MACERATA, Italy \u2014<\/div>\n
Kofi Wilson had heard gunfire every day of the 15 months he spent in Libya during a harrowing journey to Europe \u2014 but never in more than a year since he arrived in Macerata, a tranquil little city of cobblestone streets and handsome blond-brick plazas nestled in the craggy central Italian hills.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a gunshot, not here,\u201d Wilson told a friend after hearing the first crack.<\/p>\n

With the second, he was crumpled on the pavement, his chest and back spilling blood.<\/p>\n

Wilson, a 20-year-old from Ghana, was one of six African immigrants\u00a0shot here Saturday<\/a> in drive-by attacks that have stunned both the city and the nation as Italy prepares to vote in elections next month.<\/p>\n

A onetime local candidate for the Northern League \u2014 an anti-immigrant party that could soon be part of Italy\u2019s government \u2014 had the tricolor Italian flag draped over his shoulders when he was arrested on the steps of Macerata\u2019s Fascist-era war memorial.<\/p>\n

He has confessed to what police call a racially motivated rampage and said he was acting out of revenge for the gruesome killing days before of a white 18-year-old Italian woman. Her dismembered remains were found in two suitcases left by a roadside in a nearby town. Police have charged a 29-year-old Nigerian immigrant with her murder.<\/p>\n

The killing and the shootings have traumatized a city unaccustomed to violence of any kind, while laying bare the combustibility of Italy\u2019s reckoning with immigration. Even in a place such as Macerata, which has long welcomed newcomers, the strains of an influx<\/a> that has brought more than 620,000 migrants to Italy in the past four years have become all too apparent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a real awakening,\u201d said Alberto Forconi, the 74-year-old priest at Santa Croce, the church where Macerata\u2019s Catholic faithful have been worshiping since the early 16th century.<\/p>\n

<\/i>While earlier generations of asylum seekers fleeing war in the Balkans and beyond have assimilated well, Forconi said, the same cannot be said for those who have come here in recent years, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t work. They don\u2019t speak the language. They don\u2019t know the laws or the culture,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re like birds in the trees. They haven\u2019t landed in our society.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result has been growing resentment among native residents. Most people in Macerata, Forconi said, would never condone Saturday\u2019s shooting rampage. But \u201cin some ways, it was expressing their thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suspect in the shootings is Luca Traini, 28, a failed candidate for local office who was unemployed and had been kicked out of his gym last year for his\u00a0fascist views<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At a court hearing Tuesday, Traini admitted he carried out the shootings and said his only regret was that he had hit a woman \u2014 in addition to five men. All six victims are expected to survive.<\/p>\n

\u2018Chaos, rage, social clashes\u2019<\/p>\n

Police say Traini fired about 30 shots over 90 minutes Saturday morning, paralyzing the city as he guided his black Alfa Romeo through Macerata\u2019s narrow lanes. Investigators say he used a Glock semiautomatic pistol to fire out of the window, targeting dark-skinned pedestrians.<\/p>\n

Lt. Col. Michele Roberti, the local commander of Italy\u2019s elite police force, the Carabinieri, said Traini explained his actions as retaliation for the killing of 18-year-old Pamela Mastropietro.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did it out of an ill-conceived sense of revenge,\u201d Roberti said.<\/p>\n

Mastropietro\u2019s killing already had set off fierce reaction before the shootings. She was reported missing from her drug rehabilitation center Jan.\u00a029. Two days later, her remains were found just outside Macerata.<\/p>\n

Police soon arrested Innocent Oseghale, having been led to him by the taxi driver who said he transported the Nigerian immigrant and his two suitcases to the spot where the remains were later discovered. Bloody clothes and items belonging to Mastropietro were found in Oseghale\u2019s apartment, Roberti said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was this maggot still doing in Italy? He wasn\u2019t fleeing war \u2014 he brought war to Italy,\u201d Northern League leader Matteo Salvini wrote on Facebook on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The party, which campaigned on a pledge to deport 150,000 migrants and close the borders to nearly all new arrivals, is positioned to potentially join a right-wing government after the March\u00a04 elections.<\/p>\n

Even though a former Northern League candidate was implicated in the shootings, Salvini was hardly repentant afterward. While acknowledging that \u201cviolence is never the solution,\u201d he went on to blame \u201cout-of-control migration\u201d for causing \u201cchaos, rage, social clashes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Northern League has drawn only a small following in Macerata, where residents have tended toward the center-left Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

With its relative prosperity and liberal outlook, the area has attracted an ethnically and religiously diverse community of immigrants in recent decades. In the city of 43,000, about 10\u00a0percent of the population is foreign-born. More than 350 people live in government-run reception centers for recent arrivals.<\/p>\n

\u201cMacerata has always been a happy island,\u201d said Mohamed Tarakji, a 71-year-old Syrian acupuncturist who has lived here since 1973.<\/p>\n

That has not changed because of the recent violence, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe presence of violent elements does not represent a social problem. It\u2019s an individual problem,\u201d said Tarakji, who serves as faith leader at the warehouse-turned-mosque that local Muslims set up on the edge of town. \u201cIt\u2019s the folly of individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018I became even more afraid\u2019<\/p>\n

But others are less convinced that the city can carry on as normal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s as if this shooter has wounded the whole African community,\u201d said Ilaria Casarole, co-leader of the Human Solidarity Group, an organization that works with migrants.<\/p>\n

Eugene Offor, a Nigerian priest who ministers to the city\u2019s African immigrants, said he braced for a backlash the moment he heard about Mastropietro\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way she was killed was just so barbaric,\u201d he said. \u201cSince it happened, no Nigerian in Macerata has been happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was among those organizing a vigil among immigrants this past weekend to honor Mastropietro. The vigil was abruptly called off after the shootings.<\/p>\n

Offor said the lack of job prospects for newcomers \u2014 many of whom are barred from working until their asylum claims are decided \u2014 is undoubtedly causing problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou go to the supermarkets and see people asking for money,\u201d he said. \u201cIf people had work, they wouldn\u2019t have time for crime and drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson, the Ghanaian who was shot, is among those struggling to find a place in Macerata. Before reaching Italy, he was imprisoned in Libya and survived a rough voyage across the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

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Since arriving, he has been taking classes to learn the language and the culture, and he hopes to find work as a mason.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Wilson was on his way to get a haircut Saturday when the bullet pierced his lung and left him sprawled on the street. He remembers locals coming to his aid as he faded in and out of consciousness.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was only me. Then at the hospital, they told me there were five others \u2014 only blacks. I became even more afraid,\u201d said the soft-spoken Wilson as he sat upright in his bed, his chest, back and arm wrapped in bandages. \u201cThey told me the shooter was coming for his revenge. But he came for the wrong people.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Accustomed to peace, the Italian city of Macerata has been the scene of horrific violence. by Griff Witte and Stefano Pitrelli, The Washington Post<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[110,79,50,20,91],"class_list":["post-1034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-washpost","tag-fascismi","tag-migrazioni","tag-politica","tag-societa","tag-terrorismo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1034"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1035,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions\/1035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}