The staff of the SMobile square of Catania, coordinated by the Etna District Attorney’s Office, proceeded with the stopped of the Judicial Police of a twenty-eight year old Nigerian for the crimes of sexual violence and aggravated injuries.
The facts date back to the night of last June 3rdwhen a crew of the State Police, following a request received by the Operations Room of the Catania Police Headquarters via emergency line 112, intervened at a commercial business located near the port where a woman with several bleeding wounds had just taken refuge following an assault.
Due to the traumas reported, it was necessary to transport the victim by means of a 118 ambulance to the emergency room of a city hospital, where he was then reported with a 15-day prognosis.
Here, thanks to the sensitivity of the medical staff on duty and the police officers who intervened, it was possible to reconstruct what happened, learning that the victim, who usually parked on the road near the port, had initially been approached by a black man, in an obvious state of inebriation, arriving on board an electric scooter and subsequently, refusing to agree to a paid sexual service, first threatened with a piece of wood in her hand, used like a knife, and then attacked with unprecedented violence .
To escape the eyes of any passers-by who might have raised the alarm, the stranger forcibly dragged the victim to a nearby dead-end street and here, after stunning him with slaps and punches and then continuously hitting him on the head with a large stone and a plastic tube collected on the ground, managed to consummate the sexual violence.
Once the sexual intercourse was completed, the perpetrator ordered the unfortunate woman to leave the place only after he had left, but not before threatening her that he would shoot her if she ever went to the police.
Having acquired the first information, a patrol car together with the personnel of the inspection team of the Regional Scientific Police Cabinet went to the site of the violence, finding and seizing some blood-soaked clothing, as well as the objects used by the foreigner to beat the woman.
Having acquired the news, the Flying Squad personnel – Foreign Crime and Prostitution Section – immediately started the appropriate investigations, managing to reconstruct, thanks to the viewing of the videos recorded by the video surveillance systems present in the area, the path taken by the attacker on board the electric scooter before attacking the woman.
The subsequent in-depth investigations and careful reconnaissance of the locations allowed the Flying Squad investigators, in just a few hours, to identify a foreigner corresponding to the descriptions provided in the affected area, finding him in possession of a singular plastic necklace with a cross, completely similar to the one previously described by the victim.
Finally, to complete the serious evidence of guilt already existing, during a house search carried out by the men of the Flying Squad inside a makeshift accommodation used by the foreigner, a man’s trousers soaked in blood and traceable to to the brutal action.
Due to the multiple and concordant elements collected against the man and the concrete and current danger that he could flee from Sicily, effectively making himself untraceable, he was subjected to arrest by the Judicial Police and made available to the Deputy Prosecutor on duty at the local District Attorney’s Office, which ordered his translation to the Piazza-Lanza Prison.
The restrictive measure adopted was validated in the following hours by the Judge for Preliminary Investigations who applied the law to the same precautionary measure of prison.
