Five people were injured after a brawl that started with baseball bats and continued with a shootout in the center of Afragola, a municipality on the outskirts of Naples. The toll could have been dramatically more serious since everything happened shortly after the celebration of some baptisms in the church of San Giorgio, adjacent to the site of the shooting. The Police are investigating the dynamics and motive of the affair which still has unclear aspects, but which could originate from old grudges between the two groups of people involved.
No one in danger of life
It all happened around midday, in Piazza Castello. It seems that two family groups, between which there had been previous disagreements, had an argument in a bar. From words we quickly moved on to hands. There was first a fight with baseball bats and then a shootout with three gunshot wounds, one of which was in the leg and another in the abdomen, the most serious. However, none of their lives were in danger. Two other people were injured due to blows inflicted, including to the head, by blunt objects.
The mayor’s words: “It could have been a massacre”
Several 118 ambulances, the State Police and the Carabinieri intervened on the spot and found some unexploded bullets and shell casings on the ground and seized them. The outcome of the shooting – as the mayor, Antonio Pannone, made clear – could have been a massacre. “It is not acceptable – he said – for such incidents to occur in a central square, a few tens of meters from a parish where Sunday mass is being celebrated, in which a large number of fellow citizens participate, in particular many families with children This absurd ease of having firearms cannot be tolerated.”
