Garzeno (Como) – After four days of silence, during which he tried to deny it firstand then closed in silence, the seventeen-year-old yesterday morning admitted to having robbed and killed Candido Montini, owner of a grocery store and former deputy mayor of Garzeno (Como), found dead last September 26th. Thus the judge for preliminary investigations of the Juvenile Court of Milan Irina Alice Grossi, he validated arrest for voluntary homicide and robbery, and subjected the teenager (a distant relative of the victim) to the precautionary measure in prison, at the Beccaria.
Twice, in front of the magistrate who coordinates the investigations, Myriam Iacoviello, the young man had decided to remain silent. But then he confronted his defenders, he reasoned about the situation, in the four days spent away from home and away from everything in the prison institution. He lined up what the carabinieri collected about him, listed in the arrest warrant that was notified to him on Monday evening: the trace of his blood left on the knife that repeatedly hit the victim, the steps under the single camera from the hamlet of Catasco of his mother’s car which did not guarantee him an alibi, the identical knife found at home. But also the possible motive: the attempt to get 300 fake euros exchanged by the pensioner the day before, which then resulted in an argument, and the consequent loss of reputation in front of the small community in which he lived. A boy’s need for money who had dropped out of school and couldn’t find work, who was hoping for luck singing trap music.
So yesterday morning he admitted it was him. He entered the 76-year-old’s house with a kitchen knife in his pocket, with which hit him at least 28 times, even when he was on the ground, until he was slashed in the throat. He took his wallet, maybe he rummaged around the house a bit. And then he walked away, leaving the man dying, or perhaps already dead, lying in a pool of blood. Without noticing a small cut he had made between the palm and the little finger of his right hand, holding that knife which had a thickening between the handle and blade. He touched the railing in front of the front door of the victim’s house, and also the gate. He threw the knife near the chicken coop along with his wallet emptied of every penny.
He left behind him the most important evidence that led him to prison, three months before becoming an adult, and which made his attempt, on Monday, to deny all charges in vain. “Even this tragic story – commented the president of the Milan Juvenile Court, Maria Carla Gatto – which follows in a short space of time other equally dramatic events involving young people belonging to families inserted in the social context, highlights a very serious and alarming hardship which is not promptly intercepted either by the family or by the school or by the various local agencies”.
