“To date, what stands out most clearly is this personal situation of a psychiatric nature,” said the Interior Minister on Sunday after a meeting at the prefecture of Modena.
“I am not trying to downplay,” added Minister Matteo Piantedosi (right), former prefect of neighboring Bologna. “There are sometimes situations in which reasons overlap, where someone acts for terrorism or for other reasons. Let the investigators work.”
“Isolated incident”
“The city should be reassured from this point of view, in the sense that it is a dramatic, tragic, isolated incident,” emphasized the minister, praising a “choral and effective response from the citizens in primis, and then from all institutions.”
“The car entered a downtown street at high speed on a Saturday afternoon, according to surveillance video images broadcast by the media.”
The driver then tried to flee, but four passersby chased and subdued him. Faced with them, he pulled out a knife before being arrested.
“I showed that Italy is not dead,” testified one of these passersby, Luca Signorelli, who was stabbed in the face.
“I immediately told my son to chase him, he blocked him and made him drop his knife to the ground,” testified in the Italian media Osama Shalaby, a 56-year-old Egyptian doctor.
Three injured individuals were still in serious condition Sunday morning.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni canceled a planned visit to Cyprus to visit the injured in Modena with President Sergio Mattarella.
“Heroes, after all, are not extraordinary people: they are ordinary men and women who, in a decisive moment, put what is right before themselves,” said Giorgia Meloni on X after praising Luca Signorelli.
The driver, an economics graduate in 1995 and unknown to the police, “had been admitted to a mental health center for schizophrenic disorders” in 2022, explained the town prefect, Fabrizia Triolo, during a press conference on Saturday.
Questioned by the police, the young man appeared “confused” and did not answer questions, according to the Italian media. His home near Modena was searched without finding any signs of Islamic radicalization.
Sunday protest
The Italian political class reacted immediately, with the right, center, and left emphasizing the courage of the passersby who intervened to stop the driver.
The League, a far-right party in the ruling coalition in Italy, questioned “the integration of second-generation citizens.”
The mayor of Modena, Massimo Mezzetti (center-left), invited Modenese residents to gather Sunday evening at 7:00 pm in solidarity with the affected families on the city’s main square.
“It’s time to bring the community together (…) and to follow the example of those citizens who, yesterday, with civic spirit, courage, and selflessness, intervened to block the perpetrator and hand him over to law enforcement,” the mayor told AFP.
“The best response is that, faced with the vultures of social networks who try to use this very serious fact for political purposes, is the photo (of the saviors, editor’s note) with the two Italians, the two Egyptians, and then the Pakistanis who arrive and apprehend the driver,” concluded Massimo Mezzetti.
