Between the point where the bed is located and the left wall of the room, the distance is minimal. It is the same one that separated Domenico Scarcella from the two Albanian robbers who, on Saturday night, broke into his house, a two-storey house in Longuelo.
There was less than a meter between the 85-year-old man, a retired Marshal of the Financial Police, and the 26 and 27-year-old attackers: «It must have been 80 centimetres», the old man retraces those moments. The former marshal managed to make them escape by scaring them with one gunshot, a legally held .38 caliber revolver. Both young people are in prison, accused of aggravated robbery: the 27-year-old, grazed in the neck, was arrested by the State Police the same night, a few hundred meters from the house. The accomplice was stopped by police officers the next morning; he tried to escape by lowering himself from the gutters of the apartment on the third floor of an apartment building in the neighborhood.
«I shot high, even though I’m old I aim well – continues Scarcella, who everyone affectionately calls Mimmo -. If I wanted to hurt them, from this distance…». The sentence remains suspended as he points to the hole left by the bullet in the wall of the house. And he also gives an explanation as to why he had the gun at hand: «I have already suffered other robberies – He says -. And I was threatened with death several times for my work, in the past I also arrested a former Red Brigade member. I defended myself, my family and my property. It bothers me when someone says I have a gun under my pillow because I’m a criminal. A weapon should only be used in extreme cases and certainly not to offend. But I defended myself. Many other people, however, are unable to do so out of fear.”
It is the same fear that the former financier felt in those moments. And that, in retracing what happened, he resurfaces from time to time in the timbre of his voice. «I went to bed at 8.45pm to watch the match (Lazio-Verona ed.), but I was too tired and fell asleep. I was sleeping soundly when two masked men wearing balaclavas woke me up and dressed in black. It was dark, one of them was holding something in his hand. I don’t know what, but definitely a weapon. It could have been a crowbar. And they had already made a mess of the room, opening the drawers where I keep my checks. At first I thought it was a joke.”
He says he felt anguish not so much for himself, but for his wife, who did not find herself in front of the two robbers by chance: she was on the upper floor of the house, reading, while her husband was in the bedroom, where the two Albanians would have gone straight: «If she had been downstairs they would have massacred her – the former marshal is certain of this -. They were ferocious.” Woken up with a start and jolted, Scarcella also thought about his 6-year-old nephew, who is usually their guest on Saturdays: «These are bad experiences, which leave their mark. They entered precisely at the time (9.30 pm ed.) in which, usually, my nephew is with me and not in his bedroom. In an instant this thought came to mind, I asked myself: “How would I react with my grandson? Would I have shot with him nearby?”.
Once the night had passed, Scarcella went to the police station on Sunday morning to provide his version of events and file a complaint. His position is under investigation, the Prosecutor’s Office is evaluating whether he acted in self-defense. Meanwhile, the revolver was confiscated pursuant to the Consolidated Law on Public Security. «They entered by breaking the French window at the back – he continues in the reconstruction of what happened -. They kept saying, “Money, money, money, safe.” They already had the purse in their hands, I told them: “The money (500 euros, in addition to the documents ed.) is there, what more do you want?” But they continued to insist and push me. So I put my hand under the pillow, I shot and they ran away.”
Although many in the neighborhood and on social media express solidarity towards him, the retired financier downplays it: «I defended myself, that’s all. There’s nothing heroic about it.” His cell phone, however, rings several times: «Many friends are calling me to see if I’m okay, to ask me what happened the other night. But I wouldn’t want all this to be amplified.”
