Antonino Ardizzone, councilor of the Municipality of Palagonia, was arrested for complicity in the murder of Francesco Calcagno, which took place on 23 August 2017 in the town of the Piana di Catania. It was the carabinieri of the investigative unit of the provincial command of the Etna capital, together with colleagues from the Palagonia company, who carried out the precautionary custody order in prison issued by the judge for preliminary investigations, at the request of the Etna district prosecutor. The crime was also committed in order to facilitate a mafia group connected to the “Stidda” and would have connections with the assassination of the Palagonese city councilor Marco Leonardo which also took place in Palagonia on 5 August 2016.
In particular, Ardizzone is accused of having acted as an intermediary between the principal and some prominent exponents of the Stidda mafia group to find a killer to kill Calcagno and thus avenge the death of Marco Leonardo assassinated by Calcagno.
For the killing of Calcagno, murdered with five gunshots in an agricultural fund, the carabinieri on 7 September 2017 arrested the alleged material author of the crime, Luigi Cassaro, 54. For his identification, the release of a video was authorized in which the man with a gun was seen chasing the victim and then fleeing.
Calcagno, in October 2016 shot to death in a bar Marco Leonardo, a city councilor elected on a civic list, also armed. Later he turned himself in to the carabinieri, confessing to the murder, claiming to have acted in self-defense and speaking of a credit he boasted from the victim. Also in that case the dynamics of the crime were reconstructed thanks to a video.
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