He is miraculously alive, but he is in serious condition 29 years old Neapolitan stabbed in the face in a robbery attempt. The fury of his attacker – a 37-year-old already known to the police due to specific precedents (yet free to continue causing damage by sowing terror in the historic center of Naples) – exploded when the victim attempted to react: at that point the man – Gaetano Castiglia – did not hesitate to stab him in the face, one of which hit him in the cheekbone; a blow so violent that it broke the blade which remained stuck in the victim’s face.
The episode happened last Friday, but within a few hours the Carabinieri of the provincial command of Naples managed to identify the criminal, and arrested him yesterday.
The assault
Two in the morning on Friday, Pendino district, via Soprammuro: the street which during the day is a corner of typically Neapolitan folklore, with its shops and fishmongers always crowded, is semi-deserted at this time; and those who cross it do so at their own risk, knowing that when the sun goes down the entire area inside Corso Garibaldi turns into a land of thugs, drug dealers and criminals.
FM, the young man with no criminal record who has just parked the car, has almost reached the front door of his house when he is attacked: a man appears from a nearby alley on a scooter, his face covered by a balaclava and helmet. It is Gaetano Castiglia, who holds the victim in a corner with his vehicle, ordering him to hand over everything: wallet, credit cards, cell phone.
Pulp scene
It’s just the beginning of the nightmare: the assailant points a kitchen knife to the young man’s throat whose lama surpasses i ten centimeters and threatens him: “Take away everything you have or I’ll kill you!”. After an initial moment of hesitation, the 29-year-old finds the courage to react, despite his objectively weak condition. But when instinct comes into play, he always faces risks.
The victim tries to free himself, and at that point Castiglia, without hesitation, begins to hit him savagely with stabs to the face, chest and arms. The most fearsome blow is delivered at the height of the cheekbone, with such a force that the blade of the knife breaks, leaving it stuck in FM’s face. A terrible scene in perfect “pulp” style.
The escape
Those shots could have killed the 29-year-old. When the criminal realizes that he risked killing the young man, he decides to escape. But this attempt is also clumsy: the man gives gas to the scooter’s engine heading towards the Corso Garibaldi but ends up hitting a parked car. He falls, someone on the street thinks it is a road accident and offers to help him not knowing that he is a robber, but he abandons his helmet, neck warmer, knife and gloves on the street, gets back on the vehicle and disappears.
The Carabinieri of the Stella company intervened on site and seized the material abandoned by the robber, and the investigations began.
In the meantime, the 29-year-old, in serious condition, was transported to the Pellegrini hospital by some residents. The stab wounds inflicted were serious, as mentioned, one also on the right cheekbone, where, during the operation, the doctors extracted a fragment of the blade.
The turning point
THE carabinieri they analyzed the cameras installed along the robber’s route. Those crucial for his identification record the man on the ground, after fleeing and crashing into the parked car. Having collected the anthropometric data to reconstruct an identikit of the robber, fed and interrogated the database containing the mug shots, the military obtained the identification. Yesterday Castiglia ended up in prison: he also had his clothes in his house, and the scooter used for the robbery. In the next few hours there will be a hearing for him to validate his arrest on charges of attempted aggravated robbery and serious bodily injury.
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