She observed those three children playing in the square, the mothers intent on buying ice cream, then she approached the youngest, just two years old, and picked him up and started to leave. But the child’s father had remained in the square, was watching them and, after a moment of disbelief, started screaming: the woman immediately gave up and put him down. The carabinieri, called by the father of the child, identified her as a 21-year-old girl with mental problems, who was reported for attempted kidnapping.
A story that ended well but which caused a serious scare and aroused uproar, an attempted kidnapping of a child – in the very central Piazza Gae Aulenti in Milan, in the vertical forest area between fountains and gardens very popular with families at the weekend – fortunately lasted a handful of minutes thanks to the father’s quick reflexes. The young woman was in the company of a friend when, near an ice cream shop, she approached the 2-year-old boy who was playing with his 7-year-old brother and an 8-year-old friend, watched from a distance of a few tens of meters from the father. The moms of three were in the store buying some ice cream.
According to reports from the Carabinieri, the man, a 41-year-old, intervened as soon as he noticed that the young woman had gone beyond the compliments and had taken her son in her arms. A few seconds, maybe a minute, as the parent, who had been following the whole scene, moved towards her screaming loudly when he realized that the situation was getting out of hand. The man reportedly immediately yelled at her: “What are you doing? Leave him now!” and at that point she immediately left him saying it was “a joke” and then starting to insult her father repeatedly, while he tried to walk away slowly. However, the man followed her by calling 112 at the same time, and when the soldiers who were on patrol in the Garibaldi area arrived, they found her still in the square, near the central fountain, and identified and reported her: yes it is a young woman who lives in the popular neighborhoods in the San Siro area and has a few precedents for petty theft in the Central Station.
A person who is not exactly disbanded or unbalanced, since he has a residence in the Piazza Selinunte area and has no guardians, but who would live on the margins, in a situation of discomfort, also dedicated to petty crime such as thefts from passers-by in the areas around the Central Station . In the meantime, the little one was immediately embraced by his mother, warned by his father before he started following the unknown woman, and did not need medical attention. He probably didn’t even fully understand that woman’s intentions. The “joke” instead cost her a complaint for attempted kidnapping of a minor, even if now we will have to wait for the assessments of the judicial authority on the definitive hypothesis of a crime.