Richard Campolo
The violence of the attack, which almost turned into a murder, is confirmed by the breaking of her teeth and the more than 80 stitches used to sew up her numerous wounds inflicted with a knife. A 47-year-old woman was admitted yesterday morning to the Ingrassia hospital where she arrived accompanied by her children, in shock and full of cuts all over her body. “It was my husband, she tried to stab me,” she repeated agitatedly to the doctors. A statement that immediately triggered a report to the police. Her husband, from whom she had separated since last Christmas, has been untraceable and wanted for over 36 hours, since he escaped from the house they lived in in Altarello, where the tragedy was about to take place.
According to what has been reconstructed, the woman, who had decided to end a thirty-year relationship with her husband, had gone to stay with one of the children who lived in the same building for a few months now. Yesterday at dawn, she would have gone back to the house for a moment to get something her nephew needed. Then, certain that the former partner had already gone to work like every day, she would have sat on the sofa and would have lit a cigarette. Out of the corner of her eye, however, she would have seen the man who she – she told her in tears – would have immediately pulled out a large kitchen knife and would have pointed it at her neck trying to hit her.
The 47-year-old would have put up all her resistance to overcome her husband’s ferocity, parrying the blows with her arms and coming to block the blade by squeezing it in her hands. A violence perpetrated for a handful of seconds, which will have seemed like an eternity. The noise of the quarrel would have attracted the attention of the other family members, who intervened to block the man and rescue the woman who, with the last of her strength, would have escaped from the apartment and then collapsed in front of the building door. In a short time, a small group of people alarmed by the screams was created. The woman’s son and brother-in-law would have managed to block the man for a few moments who, however, making his way through, would have managed to escape on board a scooter. “He ran away screaming that he was going to kill her and then take his own life,” says a resident.
Already someone, witnessing the scene, had reported to the police what had just happened. The joint searches by the police officers and the carabinieri who are now scouring the city to track down the man were triggered immediately. His personal details were disseminated to all patrols on duty to identify the suspect that he would have been spotted by someone in the Viale Lazio area. The woman, listened to for a long time in the carabinieri barracks by specialists in code red cases, was discharged from hospital and returned home.