He argues with the administrator and tries to blow up the building: 57-year-old in prison for massacre in Turin

The gas leak which forced the Fire Brigade on Monday morning evacuate three buildings in Piazza Borgo Dora now has a ‘noir’ tinged backstory.

In prison on charges of massacre there is a 57-year-old condominium owner who lives on the first floor of one of the three evacuated buildings.

The alarm was raised in the early hours of the morning by two tenants, alerted by the strong smell of gas emanating from the apartment.

Once they arrived on site, the Fire Brigade detected an environment saturated with 14% methane and the sequence of events unfolded practically before their eyes: in the corridor they found an electric heater lit, in the kitchen the fridge (also turned on) with the door open and, under the hob, the gas connection unscrewed. More, all the shutters were sealed in the apartment. Enough to make one speculate a malicious gesture, remained without consequences “only due to the lack of the trigger and the right concentration of the air-gas mixture”.

A first lead was provided by the building’s administrator. «I know the tenant – he declared immediately after the fact – four years ago he attacked me after a condominium meeting. He owes a lot of money to the condominium, so much so that we had to resort to an injunction and the foreclosure is still pending.”

At that point the search for the person responsible began. The patrol police found him almost 3 kilometers away, in a meadow a stone’s throw from the Palace of Justice, lying on the grass with backpacks next to him. Inside the officers found a blanket, personal effects and medicines, but also the tools he would have used to tamper with the gas connection, including a sort of hatchet. «The judiciary and the police have persecuted me for years – he declared to the agents – and the administrator and the stair manager are scoundrels, which is why I decided to take justice into my own hands.”

When the police explained to him that he could have harmed innocent people, he spread his arms: “We all have to die anyway.” Yesterday at the hearing to validate the arrest he provided a partly different justification: «I was in a rage, it was an instinctive gesture – he explained to the judge and prosecutor – I wanted to take justice into my own hands against the administrator and the ladder manager. But I didn’t want to kill my neighbors, I thought they were all at work at that time”. Furthermore, he said that he only wanted to damage the furniture in a “demonstrative” way.

Behind the gesture, in addition to the condominium dispute, there would also be a disputed inheritance. “I was responsible for quality and production for Giorgio Armani – he continued – then I worked at Gucci. Until my mother got cancer and I had to leave everything to take care of her. Now she’s passed away and I can’t get hold of the inheritance and my money: she’s been going like this for 10 years.”

The judge validated the arrest and ordered precautionary custody in prison. “With his conduct he exposed an indefinite number of people to a real danger of death”, we read in the order, and “his statements do not appear fully credible”. The prison doctors will now have to express their opinion on any circumstances that could exclude imputability (such as mental defect, even partial).