It was in a parking lot that the “handover” of the granddaughter took place between the maternal and paternal grandparents, believed to be the heads of the De Martino clan of Naples: the latter showed up on board a car, in which other children were also travelling, used practically as ‘shields’, all escorted by a group of affiliates riding motorbikes and scooters, with weapons in plain sight.
This is what emerged from the investigation by the Torre del Greco Carabinieri coordinated by the DDA, which led today to the arrest of 9 people believed to be linked to the Camorra.
Those arrested – including the paternal grandparents, Francis DeMartino e Carmela Ricci – they were transferred to the prisons of Secondigliano and Santa Maria Capua Vetere.
The little girl in question was born from the relationship between a woman (with no ties to organised crime) and the scion Salvatore DeMartino – prisoner – of the family historically at the top of one of the Camorra factions and operating in the eastern area of Naples and, in particular, in the Ponticelli district.
The father was able, investigators report, to communicate externally “via an Instagram profile” with the complicity of a prison guard. This is what is written in the arrest warrant. “I have often spoken to him – the woman tells – and I know that he is kept informed of everything that happens.”
The mother of the child, investigators report, was also brutally beaten if she did not accompany her daughter to her paternal grandparents’ house: when the little girl was less than a year old, the mother decided not to go to her ex’s parents because the little girl was resting, due to a stomach ache she had suffered. But the scion of the De Martino clan together with his parents demanded daily visits and when they refused, the beatings began.
In the summer of 2022, investigators say, the mother and grandmother were beaten with extreme violence in the presence of the little girl’s father and the grandmother who was holding her granddaughter in her arms. The beatings were followed by an order from the paternal grandfather – while he was punching the victims’ car – not to go to the police to report the incident. The De Martinos were offered the chance to go to the mother’s house to see the little girl, but the option was rejected: they feared, in fact, that they could become the target of ambushes since the little girl’s family home was outside the clan’s stronghold. It was precisely the fear of raids that pushed the maternal grandparents to make excuses to avoid taking the little girl to Ponticelli. And this again led to death threats: the woman was held to the head with a gun “ordering her to let him see her daughter regularly”, as can be read in the order viewed and reported by ‘LePress’. “Since birth”, in 2021, to the time he was arrested, in August 2023, “he used to threaten” the woman: “there would be dire consequences” if she started a new relationship. In the life of his daughter “there were not supposed to be other men”, the investigating judge of Naples writes again.
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