She was walking through a park in her city on Saturday evening when she was suddenly attacked and viciously beaten by a homeless man. Iris Setti, 61, died following the violent beatings received by the man in the Nikolajevka gardens of Rovereto, in the province of Trento. Found by the rescuers already unconscious, with a swollen face and pulled down trousers, there was nothing they could do: the woman lost her life shortly after arriving at the hospital. For the shocking crime, defined by the Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi as “a very serious fact”, a Nigerian homeless man of around 40 ended up in handcuffs who, according to what has been reconstructed, also attempted to rape the victim before attacking her in that brutal way. With several precedents, the man was in a state of confusion – probably drunk or under the influence of drugs – when he was stopped by the police only a few minutes after the attack.
Iris Setti, who was the woman attacked and killed by a homeless man in a park in Rovereto: she was going to her mother’s house
The alarm
The alarm was raised around 10.30pm. The residents of a building near the park, a few steps from the historic center of Rovereto, heard the desperate cries of the woman and looked out the windows. Before their eyes, that chilling scene. Iris was lying on her back on her back with the homeless man straddling her. In a rage, he kept hitting her relentlessly, ignoring her screams and denying her any chance of escape. Kicks, punches and various blows thrown even with a stone picked up from the ground. The woman was half naked, with her pants halfway down her legs: it is not excluded that he was the one who undressed her in an attempt to rape her. She screamed, struggled and tried to fight in every way to make him give up. When the clochard decided to let her go, it was already late. Iris’s face had been completely disfigured and she lay on the ground, covered in blood and now in very serious condition. The desperate rush to the hospital was useless, where the 61-year-old died shortly after. In the meantime, the attacker had disappeared but the carabinieri found him shortly afterwards, still in the Santa Maria district, and arrested him for the crime of murder.
The reconstruction
The victim was attacked in the middle of the path that crosses the park. It seems that she was passing through the gardens to reach the Lungo Leno where her elderly mother lives, whom the woman regularly took care of. It is not excluded that the target of the aggression, which then became increasingly ferocious, was precisely sexual violence. The military, coordinated by the Rovereto prosecutor’s office, are working to clarify whether the victim and perpetrator were linked in some way by previous relationships or if the woman was randomly targeted. Certainly the homeless man, who will now have to answer for the murder of the 61-year-old, was already known in the Rovereto community for a bad episode that occurred last summer, when he started damaging parked cars on the street, threatening passers-by and patrons of a place with a shard of bottle. On that occasion “the attacker had been immobilized in broad daylight and it had been possible to contain his fury”, recalled the mayor Francesco Valduga, rushing to the scene of the tragedy in the following moments. “So we can’t imagine that we limit ourselves to expressing pain: there was a precedent and we have to understand if he could have prevented us from what happened”.
The condolences
Expressing condolences, the mayor of Rovereto added: “I don’t want to accuse anyone, but at the same time we need to understand.” The interior minister Matteo Piantedosi also spoke to comment on the sad story and underlined how “the barbarous murder” is “a very serious fact. I asked the chief of police – explained the owner of the Viminale – to have all the necessary insights and a detailed reconstruction of the story, also to understand if there was something that didn’t work”. Expressing “the deepest condolences”, the minister declared that these investigations “are due to the victim and her family. Furthermore, they are also necessary to understand what we need to further implement to ensure ever greater protection of citizens. We are already at work to present a package of rules in September to further strengthen all the tools available to the police forces to counter the most recurring criminal phenomena and citizens’ insecurity”.
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in Il Gazzettino