“Not only do I not absolve myself as a father, but I say that no adult here can truly absolve themselves,” says the Carabinieri colonel, father of one of the witnesses to the murder of Thomas Christopher Luciani, for which two 16-year-olds are under investigation, one of whom is the son of a colleague in the force. It was the colonel who apparently convinced his son to speak to the police, after the boy returned home a few hours after the crime and confided in his parents. It was then the 16-year-old’s indications that allowed Luciani’s now lifeless body to be identified. It’s a story “worse than how you tell it,” says the colonel.
“Now is not the time to judge”
As he tells Corriere della Sera, now his life is inevitably turned upside down and so is that of his son. To those who accuse him as a parent, the colonel replies: “Here I can only say that it is very difficult to judge, I ask you to put yourself in my shoes.” The officer explains that he always tried to keep himself informed about what his son was doing and who he was hanging out with: «I asked him where he went and what he did, who his friends were and how they spent their time, but…The answer was reassuring and for some deceptive verse”. The 16-year-old was in the group which also included the two investigated for Luciani’s murder. A group that his father tended to trust: «He told me “I’m going out with my friend, the son of a lawyer” or “I’m seeing that other one, the son of one of your colleagues”. I should have investigated more thoroughly. Should I not have settled?”. To these questions he says he doesn’t have an answer, «and I allow myself to doubt anyone who does. This is not the time to judge, it’s the time to understand.”
«My son will live a life of surrender»
The position of his son is now being examined by the investigators, after his two friends have already been arrested, considered the material executors of the stabbing that killed Luciani. As far as he is concerned, the colonel assures that he will take the first measures: «I would like my son to live by improving his life from now on. He will live a life of consignment, as we say. I want him to keep in mind what happened over time, to keep alive the memory of the boy he saw die and to live up to it.”
