Video of fatal attack on Nigerian immigrant shocks Italy
Police in Italy arrested an Italian man in the slaying of a Nigerian vendor whose beating death on a busy beach town thoroughfare was filmed by onlookers without any apparent attempt to intervene physically.
Video of the attack has circulated widely on Italian news websites and social media, eliciting outrage as Italy enters a parliamentary election campaign in which the right-wing coalition has already made immigration an issue.
“The murder of Alika Ogorchukwu is dismaying,’’ Enrico Letta, the head of the left-wing Democratic Party, wrote Saturday on Twitter, naming the vendor who died Friday. “Unheard of ferocity. Widespread indifference. There can be no justification.”
Right-wing leader Matteo Salvini, who is making security a plank of his campaign, also expressed outrage, saying “security has no color and ... needs to return to being a right.”
Slumping economies, conflict and lack of opportunity at home are pushing many young people across borders — even oceans.
Ogorchukwu, 39, was selling goods Friday on the main street of Civitanova Marche, a beach town on the Adriatic Sea, when his attacker grabbed the vendor’s crutch and struck him down, according to police. Video shows the assailant wrestling the victim onto his back on the pavement as he fought back, eventually subduing Ogorchukwu with the weight of his body.
“The aggressor went after the victim, first hitting him with a crutch. He made him fall to the ground, then he finished, causing the death, hitting him repeatedly with his bare hands,” the town’s chief commissioner, Fabio Mazza, said during a news conference.
Police investigator Matteo Luconi told Italian news channel Sky TG24 that onlookers called police, who responded after the attacker had fled and attempted to administer aid to the victim.
Police used street cameras to track the assailant’s movements and detained a man identified as Filippo Claudio Giuseppe Ferlazzo, 32. He was being held on suspicion of murder and theft for allegedly taking the victim’s phone.
Luconi told Sky TG24 the assailant lashed out after the vendor made “insistent” requests for pocket change. Police were questioning witnesses and viewing videos. They said the suspect has made no statement.
Ogorchukwu, who was married with two children, resorted to selling goods on the street after he was struck by a car and lost his job as a laborer because of his injuries, said Daniel Amanze, who runs an association for immigrants called ACSIM in the Marche region’s Macerata province.
Amanze gave a different version of what happened, saying the attacker became infuriated when Ogorchukwu told the man’s companion she was beautiful.
“This compliment killed him,” Amanze said. “The tragic fact is that there were many people nearby. They filmed, saying, ‘Stop,’ but no one moved to separate them.’’
Macerata was the site of a 2018 shooting rampage targeting African immigrants that wounded six people. Luca Traini, who was 28 at the time of the shootings, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the shootings, which Italy’s highest court confirmed qualified as a hate crime.
Civitanova Marche’s mayor, Fabrizio Ciarapica, met with members of the Nigerian community after hundreds demonstrated Saturday.
“My condemnation is not only for the [crime], but it is also for the indifference,” Ciarapica told Sky. “This is something that has shocked citizens.”
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