The Gela policeman Giovanni Lorefice, gold medal as a victim of terrorism

The granting of a gold medal by the President of the Republic Mattarella to the policeman Giovanni Lorefice originally from Gela went unnoticed by the Municipality of Gela in 2016, without proper and dutiful highlighting;

a gold medal, which adds to the previous five of his compatriots Giovanni Guccione, Emanuele Guttadauro, Giulio Cesare Siragusa, Giuseppe Valenti and Sebastiano D’Immè.

We report here the reason for this deserving concession granted to Giovanni Lorefice, a man of the State Police. And we do this by taking news from the Roman newspaper Il Messaggero of 19 February 2024, which reported the disappearance of Lorefice with an article entitled: “Goodbye to the policeman Lorefice, the only survivor of the fatal attack in Serpico”.

Here’s how the facts unfolded. On 28 May 1980, in front of the Roman high school “Giulio Cesare”, an ambush was perpetrated on a patrol car of the State Police which was in via Trieste following and controlling a procession. Around 8.00 am while the young high school students were about to enter school, a commando of four terrorists from the NAR (Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, an Italian terrorist organization of far-right neo-fascist and neo-Nazi orientation), Valerio Fioravanti, Francesco Mambro, Giorgio Vale and Luigi Ciavardini, who arrived on two Vesponi, killed the neighborhood super-policeman Francesco Evangelista, then known as “Serpico”, a character who inspired the 1973 film of the same name, with seven shots. by Sidney Lumet starring Al Pacino.

Together with Francesco Evangelista there were also two of his colleagues, Antonio Manfreda and our Giovanni Lorefice, the latter then serving at the Roman police station of Porta Pia; in the attack, these last two police colleagues of “Serpico” also suffered serious injuries, in particular our Lorefice hit in various parts of the body and on the head, so much so that, following the serious injuries sustained, he remained completely disabled. percent.

And for this reason and above all as a victim of terrorism, he received the aforementioned prestigious honor. The policeman Manfreda also suffered from injuries whose consequences after several years were the cause of his disappearance.

Today the name of the policeman Giovanni Lorefice, despite the serious oversights of the Institution, appears imprinted among the six Gelese gold medals on the stele in Piazza Martiri della Libertà as an everlasting memory.