Of Pierpaolo Lio and Rosanna Scardi
Milan, the turning point thanks to the cameras that filmed the man from Pioltello to Forlanini on April 5: Ghit ZRR, 36 years old, pizza chef. He will have to answer for aggravated sexual assault. The investigating judge: premeditation and brutality in broad daylight
There’s something about that look that suddenly changes. Those eyes that only a little before seemed “kind”, are now “different”: they are on her, they hunt her down. It’s April 5th. She, a 21-year-old from Tuscany, finds herself crushed between the seat and the window of the train. She tries to rebel, cries, asks for help. That’s 120 seconds of terror. Until the girl manages to free herself and escape. The alarm is immediate, but the attacker is faster. There is no longer any trace of him. Up until yesterday: Ghit ZRR, an Egyptian salesman, 36 years old, regular and with a clean record, was arrested at dawn in his house in Dergano, a district on the northern outskirts of Milan. “I haven’t done anything wrong”, he defended himself in front of the agents of the mobile squad and of Polfer, coordinated by the prosecutor Rosaria Stagnaro and the deputy Letizia Mannella. He will have to answer for aggravated sexual assault. The news is a relief for the girl: “I’m very happy. Complaining is essential. It had to be stopped”.
It’s twenty minutes: from the first random crossing to track 1 of the Garibaldi stationto aggression, to escape. All documented by cameras: in stations, on the train, on the street.
Ore 10.17. For the first time, the lens on the quay frames the girl and the one that sraà her rapist on the Regional «S524531» Varese-Treviglio. He is a commuter. He has been traveling that section for some time: from the Lancetti stop; the exchange at Garibaldi; he goes down to Pioltello, just outside Milan, where he works in a pizzeria. That day he had a fluorescent orange jacket, a shoulder pouch, two envelopes in his hand. On the platform he notices the bewildered young woman, approaches, introduces himself. She has to reach her boyfriend in Bergamo, he suggests that they take the train to Treviglio together. “He seemed to want to help me”the victim will put on the record.
Ore 10.25. The assailant and the girl get into the carriage together. Then, they split up. She looks for the controller: she wants to be sure she’s not making a mistake. She doesn’t find it. She continues to turn, she climbs onto the upper part of the car and ends up meeting that man again.
Ore 10.35. There are two men sitting. At the top, there is Ghit. Another passenger is in the back seat: he will get off before the attack begins. “Oh, did you succeed? You asked? – is the new approach of the Egyptian -. If you want, sit here». She accepts. A few moments later the nightmare begins.
Ore 10.36. “I saw her face change, it seemed to me that she no longer listened to me, but that she looked at me with a different attention”, the girl will say: “I perceived that the situation was no longer normal, it no longer seemed safe to me, I tried to get up to leave”. His reaction freezes her. «I didn’t even have the time to realize (…), it was hard to breathe». She cries, asks in vain for help, tries to free herself. He reassures her: “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to you”.
Ore 10.37. She is pressed against the window. He’s on her. But the girl manages to free an arm. It’s an instinctive gesture: it hits him on the chin. The 36-year-old lets go. She walks away. She joins a Polfer patrol, she tells everything. When the doors are locked to prevent the attacker from escaping, it’s late. The clock strikes 10.39: he gets off at the Forlanini stop. At 10.50 a camera already identifies him on the street.
Frame analysis gives that man a name: the «Sari» software returns an identity, confirmed by other databases. It’s Ghit. In the Polfer archive it appears to have been checked several times on that section. Land cell phones give another match. And then there is the acknowledgment by the victim. For the investigating judge Lorenza Pasquinelli it is a matter of violence “particularly insidious and dangerous precisely because of the daily and absolutely normal situation” in which it took place, she writes in theorder for custody in prisonwhich took place “in broad daylight” and in ways that “denote a certain premeditation and brutality”.
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