More violence around the Milan Central Station, for some time constantly at the center of day and night crime, and where in the afternoon six passers-by were injured, one seriously, following two or perhaps three robberies carried out by a drunk man armed with a small knife, described as a young North African. And perhaps it is thanks to the short blade of the multipurpose pocketknife that today the worst has been avoided.
At first it seemed that the attackers were two, but the State Police, which stopped one, believes he probably acted alone, at different times and places, wreaking fear and havoc in a central area of the city and at rush hour, when the sidewalks are full of people. The balance in the end is six people injured, one of which was treated on the spot, while the other five were transported to the hospital, two of them in serious condition: a 57-year-old whose conditions are of no concern e a 68-year-old in danger of life and under observation.
It would be a witness who intervened to defend a girl who was robbed while she was in the company of her boyfriend. The first intervention of the rescuers, who arrived on the spot with medical vehicles and ambulances, took place in via Sammartini 45 at 17.40, where there was a 34-year-old Spanish girl with a trauma to her face, attacked with her bare hands and beaten, and a 58-year-old Salvadoran who suffered a slight wound to one hand, treated on the spot.
Ten minutes later, and a short distance away, just over 500 metres, in viale Brianza at number 27, there was a second attack, but with more serious results. A 68-year-old man left on the ground was hit with a blow to the shoulder, which perhaps severed an artery causing the loss of a lot of blood, and who would have also hit his head violently when he fell, and who was transported in code red to the Niguarda hospital, and a 57-year-old man still stabbed in the arm, taken in red code to the San Carlo hospital in Milan, as well as another man, probably the 25-year-old boyfriend of the robbery, who suffered a stab wound to the chest, and a woman with a neck wound, aged 24, perhaps the person to defend whom the others would have intervened.
Certainly the alleged perpetrator, according to what has been learned, in addition to the bloody pocketknife, he had with him the personal belongings of the woman robbed in viale Brianza, as well as three mobile phones which could be the loot grabbed in via Sammartini and – it is not excluded – during a third robbery along the way. It was blocked by police motorcyclists in nearby via Venini. “Shocking news from my Milan, where the Central Station area is confirmed to be at serious risk: only the heroic intervention of some citizens has avoided an even more dramatic balance”, was the comment of the deputy prime minister and minister Matteo Salvini.