Attacked and beaten while they were doing their job: one punched in the face, the other pushed to the ground. This is the unacceptable and disturbing episode of violence suffered late on Friday evening by the staff of Bookique, Predara’s literary café.
The victims are two barmaids who work together Serena Tomasi in the management of the venue. The fury of their attacker, a twenty-nine year old – still unknown for now – was unleashed at the end of the evening.
A few minutes had passed after 2 in the morning on the night between Friday and Saturday, and the two young women, after closing to the public, were rearranging the external and internal spaces of the venue.
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La Bookique, born as a garrison of the area and the nearby park, is a place appreciated for music, aggregation and cultural initiatives involving young people and university students. At that moment, the twenty-nine year old, who had been noticed wandering near the portico surrounding the square, approached one of the two barmaids, rudely asking her to serve him a drink.
Faced with the refusal of the barmaid, who was about to leave the place together with her colleague, the young man reacted violently, punching the girl in the face.
The other barmaid immediately intervened to defend her colleague, but the attacker also attacked her, pushing her to the ground. Only after getting up and using her backpack to hit the attacker, both managed to chase him out of the club and barricade themselves inside, calling 112.
Undeterred, the 29-year-old remained outside, trying to get in and railing against the young girls, understandably terrified. The arrival of a police patrol allowed the girls to reach safety and receive medical treatment.
The barmaid who was hit in the face suffered significant injuries. The twenty-nine-year-old, who was later discovered to have also damaged numerous cars parked nearby, was taken to the police station and reported to be at liberty on charges of injury.
This serious episode, which occurred on Saturday evening, not only deeply affected the victims, but it also represents yet another insult to female dignity. La Bookique, which has launched evenings run by an entirely female staff, finds itself intolerably having to deal with violence in the workplace.
