BY PATRIZIA ANTONINI
She was shot in the face while she was working. Ornella Saiu, 40 years old, widow with a barely legal child, originally from Sardinia but in Playa del Carmen for 20 years, was known and appreciated by everyone in the Italian community who usually frequented the Sabrina 48 café bar, where she was killed yesterday morning at 8.30 under the eyes of customers still in shock. Witnesses describe the killer as a robustly built person, wearing a blue helmet, who arrived on a motorbike and fled immediately after shooting, without saying a word.
The investigators have found the motorbike and the clothes of the murderer and are analyzing the images of the security cameras, while a real manhunt is underway. In the past, in the coastal town of the state of Quintana Roo, one of the main destinations for international tourism in Mexico, there have been crimes related to drug dealing, and just recently a delegation of European experts has arrived on the spot to better clarify which may be the risks for tourists who reach the place renowned for its paradisiacal beaches and crystal clear waters.
But the motive for this case which some define as “atypical” seems to be more limited to the hypotheses of an attempt at extortion, or to passionate motives. According to the local newspaper Por Esto – which leans towards the thesis of the pizzo – the owners of the bar, who left on a trip just a few days ago, had recently had their permit to sell alcohol removed. While other reconstructions insist on the track of jealousy, and on the fact that the victim and her killer knew each other and had worked together in the past. Attorney General Oscar Montes is keeping the case confidential, while the security secretary of the municipality of Solidaridad (which includes Playa del Carmen) has asked for “the collaboration of the population to find the culprit”.
The investigations are followed by the Italian embassy in Mexico City, where the ambassador Luigi De Chiara is in close contact with the foreign minister, Antonio Tajani. “We are shocked, saddened and angry about what happened. We are waiting for the authorities to tell us something”, explained to ANSA the honorary consul of Playa, Italo Sampablo, who knew the victim personally. Ornella was an “affable”, kind and nice woman, used to “chatting with customers about this and that”, often commenting on the news of the day.
“He had been working in the bar for years”, a point of reference for the Italian community, which has two thousand members at Aire, but in reality the attendance is 10-15 thousand. The community has now gathered around Ornella’s son, Marco, to assist and help him in this terrible moment. Among the precedents of Italians killed in Playa del Carmen, the last is that of the Milanese chef Daniel Pessina, in 2017, shot in a room where the final evening of a festival was underway, the victim of a settling of scores between gangs of drug traffickers which caused five deaths and fifteen injuries.