The owner of a villa between Livorno and Pisa who on Friday evening reacted to the attack by four bandits who beat him, lifted him and took him with them to have the safe opened. The story, made known by Il Tirreno, involves a famous car driver, the former rally driver of the Lancia Martini team, Andrea Aghini, one of the most followed in the 80s and 90s when he competed in the world championship with the official team, also winning a Sanremo Rally world champion in 1992, last time in the WRC of an Italian car driven by an Italian. The robbery took place after 9pm between Collesalvetti (Livorno) and Fauglia (Pisa) while Aghini was moving between the adjacent family homes. He was going from his mother’s house, who is a widow, to his house through his garden. Here, four men covered with balaclavas surrounded and immobilized him, trying to suffocate him with a rag and kicking and punching him.
“I reacted instinctively, I struggled – he recalled -, but they grabbed me bodily and took me into the house. I wasn’t afraid. I don’t know who they were, they didn’t say a word”. After hitting him, the bandits opened the safe, robbed what was there – at least two watches, the inventory has to be done – and cut the video surveillance cables, but then the doorbell rang and they had to leave before completing the raid. What stopped them? “There is a driving school near my house, the students heard my screams and came to help me – Aghini recalled from his hospital bed – The robbers realized they had been discovered and fled. I took one I chased him but I couldn’t catch him.” The police are investigating the robbery.
The house is in a residential area surrounded by countryside and it is easy to escape along the many secondary roads there. Andrea Aghini, now 60, is a local celebrity and is easy to spot in the hills from Livorno to Pisa where he lives and where everyone knows him. In motorsport circles he has international fame, he is considered one of the most acclaimed and spectacular asphalt drivers even though he was also strong on dirt roads. In his racing career he was an official driver for Peugeot, Lancia, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Subaru, he won two Italian championships with Toyota in 1998 and 1999, but before that, with sporting director Cesare Fiorio, he won the 1992 Sanremo when the world race it arrived in Tuscany and Umbria. In his palmares there are many absolute victories. Four at the Madeira Rally alone, the top race of the European Championship where he and his co-driver Sauro Farnocchia escaped death after going off the road where the poles of a fence ‘skewered’ their Delta. With his instinctive but concrete piloting he innovated the Italian school after the glories of Sandro Munari, Attilio Bettega, Massimo Biasion, the two-time world champion from whom he received the tricolor baton. In his career he had serious accidents – including the death of co-driver Loris Roggia at the 2003 Salento Rally and of a spectator at the 2008 Ciocco Rally – but never with heavy and direct physical consequences on him as happened this time due to the thieves.
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