Lawyer attacked with acid by a client in Santo Stefano Medio, Messina

He was in the car with a client he knows, who was also a little problematic, who wanted to talk to him, but then the woman said she was thirsty and took a small plastic bottle out of her bag, which did not contain water but an acid, and threw it at him.

The victim of the attack, which occurred last night in Santo Stefano Medio, a hamlet of Messina, is a 58-year-old lawyer, Piefrancesco Broccio, who suffered burns on 20% of his body, mainly on the lower part of the face, neck and chest. The lawyer knows the client well also because, he explains to ANSA, "she had problems" so much so that "she was in the judicial psychiatric hospital of Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto for years".

The lawyer's first reaction was to seek safety: he locked himself in the car and fled, first towards the office where he called for help. He was taken to hospital, to the emergency room of the Gaetano Martino University Hospital in Messina. After the visit and after having stabilized him, although his life was not in danger, the doctors arranged for his transfer to the Cannizzaro hospital in Catania where he was taken care of by the specialists of the Large Burns centre. Immediately medicated for acid burns covering approximately 20% of the body, but deep, due to the use of a caustic product. He is hospitalized in the intensive care unit with the prognosis still reserved, but his life is not in danger. The Carabinieri of the Messina provincial command are investigating the incident and are looking for the woman. The lawyer himself reconstructed the attack, speaking to ANSA on the phone from the hospital.

"I didn't think it could come to this. Luckily I'm out of danger," he said. As soon as he saw me he told me he wanted to drink some water and unexpectedly he took the acid and threw it on me. Luckily she didn't manage to get me in the eye, also because I had glasses. I locked myself in the car and ran away. I arrived in my studio and all my clothes were burned by the acid. I never had any problems with her, but after what she did I was very scared."

As to what could have pushed the woman to commit the serious act, the lawyer says that "the only episode for which she could have been angry with me in the past was that I had told him to tell the truth about an act of which he had accused a person, but I didn't think he could do this to me now". After the attack, concludes the lawyer Broccio, "the woman fled, the investigators know who she is, and they are looking for her".