Zakaria Atqaoui, the 23-year-old who confessed to killing his ex-girlfriend Sofia Castelli at dawn on July 29 in Cologno Monzese, confirmed that he had hit her “three times on the neck”. After the first hit he wouldn’t remember anything else until he saw himself “bloody out of the room”. He had hidden a knife in the wardrobe which he would later replace with another, when the girl was already asleep, thinking it wasn’t “suitable”. According to what he said during the interrogation, the blade of the knife was serrated and the point blunt: “I went back to the kitchen and I got a more suitable one,” he said. The coroner found injuries to the face and neck. In relation to the 23-year-old, the investigating judge of Monza Elena Sechi ordered precautionary custody in prison and acknowledged the aggravating circumstances of premeditation, of the emotional relationship and of the insidious vehicle contested by the prosecutor.
Atqaoui’s interrogation
Atqaoui yesterday in five hours of interrogation substantially confirmed the confession already made to prosecutor Emma Gambardella and the carabinieri. In his story, the 23-year-old, who stabbed his ex-girlfriend Sofia Castelli in Cologno Monzese at dawn on Saturday, added a few details that do not change the picture that emerged. Atqaoui’s anger was triggered by the suspicion that Sofia had a new boyfriend after the 20-year-old had definitively broken off their relationship that began in 2018 and went on for five years between constant push and pull.
The investigating judge: “Lack of control of violent impulses”
Zakaria Atqaoui’s admissions, according to the judge “appear to be characterized by illogical profiles and aimed at limiting the seriousness of the behavior held, attempting to accredit the thesis of a momentary ‘raptus’, determined solely by Sofia’s, according to him, inconsistent behavior , who would have deceived him with respect to the hope of being able to resume the relationship and then definitively removed him, blocking him on Instagram and essentially refusing to meet him again “, reads the pre-trial detention order in prison. According to the judge, the methods of the murder as reconstructed by the carabinieri of the Sesto San Giovanni company and by Atqaoui himself demonstrate in him “an evident lack of control of his own violent impulses”.
Autopsy tomorrow
According to what emerged, the 23-year-old would have hit his ex-girlfriend with at least five blows to the throat using a kitchen knife taken from the kitchen. However, a response to the first examination of the body of the 20-year-old killed will come from the autopsy scheduled for tomorrow. During the examination, the wounds will be compared with the bloody blade found and seized by the military. During the investigation it emerged that the 23-year-old, on the day of the murder on Saturday 29 July, had hidden himself in a closet in his ex-girlfriend’s house. He was convinced to surprise the girl in the company of another man. For this reason he had waited for her inside the apartment. Returning with a friend, and unaware of her presence in her ex’s house, the young woman would have talked about the night at the disco and made comments about some known boys. This detail – according to the 23-year-old’s story – would have triggered her anger. After waiting for the ex-girlfriend to fall asleep, he allegedly went to the kitchen and, taking a knife, attacked and killed the 20-year-old. The friend, in the next room, didn’t notice anything.