Sassari On 7 June 2020 he entered a supermarket in Alghero and was the protagonist of an unfortunate episode. Which yesterday, in court, cost him a sentence from the judge Anna Pintore4 months’ imprisonment and compensation for damages.
«I don’t go to that box because the black man is there». This is how a sixty-year-old man responded to the cashier who invited him to be served by his colleague. The latter, disconcerted and indignant – as were all the customers who had witnessed the scene – had asked him to repeat that sentence aloud and had also added that, if she did not like his decision (that of not opening a additional cash as he demanded), he could have left the supermarket.
When the Cuban cashier he realized that he was the topic of discussion, he approached the customer to ask him for clarification and in response he was called a “cogl…”: “Go away – the 60-year-old told him – that you are a piece of sh…» The reply from the young thirty-year-old was not long in coming: “And you, on the other hand, are an idiot.”
At that point the customer tried to slap the cashier and then threw a tin can containing dog food at him. Both attempts were unsuccessful because the Cuban clerk managed to dodge both the slap and the can. In the meantime, the people present in the shop had expressed their solidarity with the boy, including his colleagues. And feeling “surrounded”, the man fired another: “Shut up, you’re all from the Democratic Party.” Then he left, after being chased away by the supermarket security guard.
The thirty-year-old had turned to the lawyer Elias Vacca and had filed a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office. At the end of the investigations the sixty-year-old (defended by the lawyer Ica Cadau Ena) was sent to trial for attempted harm and threatsaggravated byethnic hatred and from discrimination.
Among other things, the Cuban boy had learned that already another time, several months earlier, the gentleman had refused to queue at the cash register where he was working. On that occasion, however, the thirty-year-old had no opportunity to directly hear the insults. They were later reported to him by colleagues.
