It was the night of February 3, 2020, a Monday, around 3.30 am, and in the Cerialdo hamlet of Cuneo someone fired five gunshots at a house in the nomad camp. The bullets lodged in the wall and broke the street window and the rear window of the living room after ricocheting off the ceiling. A couple aged 57 and 54, their 29-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old daughter of the young woman were sleeping in the house at the time. The shots hit the living room, while the bedrooms are at the back: no one was injured but there was a lot of fear. The residents of the camp called 112: police cars, forensics and investigators from the Flying Squad intervened. The investigation into who did the shooting led to Jonni Antonemi, of Sinti origin, who was on trial yesterday before the Cuneo court for illegal possession of weapons and threats.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, he was the one who shot for reasons linked to family disagreements with the occupants of the house. The man, assisted by the lawyer Rosalba Cannone, appeared before judge Marco Toscano, accompanied by the penitentiary police because he is serving a sentence for theft in prison. The defense theory is that he was not the one who fired the gunshots.
The starting point for the accusation is not simple because, as the public prosecutor Pier Attilio Stea clarified, the occupants of the house did not file a complaint. They will still have to appear to give testimony before the court at the next hearing set for September 6. The investigators managed to identify Antonemi on the basis of telephone and environmental interceptions of both the person concerned and his relatives.
«We knew that there was a family dispute – explained Alberto Giostra of the Cuneo Flying Squad – and that the previous morning there had already been a discussion between Antonemi and one of the occupants of the house». The inspector added that the accused had already been intercepted for investigations into other crimes and his possession of a gun had emerged from his conversations. According to the forensic investigations that analyzed the bullets found in the house, all the bullets were fired from the same weapon, a 38 caliber revolver, which was never found.
The wiretaps also reveal that the accused sent a message to one of the occupants of the house in July, after the shooting, writing “now you’re dead”. The defense lawyer: “It’s one thing to say a sentence in a moment of anger and another to shoot.”
