Suspect shoots, wounds at least six ‘people of color’ in Italian city amid tensions
A man draped in Italy’s tricolor flag wounded at least six “people of color” in a drive-by shooting in a central Italian city on Saturday before being detained, authorities said. The suspect had been a candidate for the anti-immigrant Northern League party in municipal elections last year, according to a party spokeswoman.
The suspect’s motive in the shootings in Macerata was not known, but a young Italian woman was gruesomely murdered in the city this past week, allegedly by a Nigerian immigrant, prompting a wave of anger in a nation where many were already seeking to reduce the entry of migrants.
The attack’s connection to the Northern League was likely to unsettle Italy as it approaches national elections on March 4. Far-right groups have been gaining in the polls, and the Northern League looks as though it may have a chance to govern as a junior member of a coalition with other right-wing parties.
A police spokesman said that 28-year-old Luca Traini was detained near Macerata’s central war memorial early Saturday afternoon. A handgun was in the suspect’s car, and the green-white-and-red flag of Italy was tied around his shoulders, the official said. Traini admitted his guilt as he was arrested, added the spokesman, who declined to be publicly identified under ground rules set by the force. The five men and one woman who were shot were expected to recover, Macerata Mayor Romano Carancini said.
Local news outlets said that the man was detained after he stepped out of his black Alfa Romeo 147 near the memorial, gave a fascist salute, and shouted “Italy for the Italians.” It was not clear whether the victims were Italian citizens.
After the attack, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni called on political leaders on all sides to stop a “cycle of violence.”
“Let’s stop this risk, let’s stop in now, let’s stop it together,” he said in a nationally televised statement from his residence, the Palazzo Chigi, in Rome. “Hate and violence won’t be able to divide us.”
Large numbers of migrants began sailing across the Mediterranean toward Italy after Libya plunged into lawlessness and civil war following the 2011 downfall of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi. More than 620,000 migrants, many of them African, have arrived in Italy since the beginning of 2014, contributing to a growing sense among Italians that the country was taking in far more people than it could handle.
Anti-immigrant sentiment has become a main theme in the campaign leading up to next month’s elections. Northern League leader Matteo Salvini has vowed to expel 150,000 immigrants from Italy and close the country’s borders to most new arrivals.
The murder in Macerata this past week of 18-year-old Pamela Mastropietro drew national attention to the city of 43,000 and added fuel to the debate on migration. On Wednesday, her dismembered remains were found packed into two suitcases. A 29-year-old Nigerian man, Innocent Oseghale, was charged with her murder.
“What was this maggot still doing in Italy? He wasn’t fleeing war, he brought war to Italy,” Salvini wrote on Facebook on Thursday.
The suspect in Saturday’s shooting ran as a Northern League candidate last June for a seat on the municipal council of Corridonia, a town of 15,000 people just south of Macerata, according to a Northern League spokeswoman who spoke on condition that her name not be used. She said that the party was conferring about how to respond to the news.