"She was scared. And she had been with us in Puglia also because she was too scared." So why didn't he report it? "He didn't want to harm it." Whispers the mother of Lorena Isceri, the 45-year-old manager, killed yesterday by her ex Federico Vella who threw her off the A1 viaduct in Barberino del Mugello and then threw himself into the void himself. Her pale face hidden by a pair of sunglasses, the woman leans on her family who accompanied her on the long journey from Squinzano (Lecce) to Florence where her daughter lived. He last heard from Lorena yesterday morning: "at 10.30, she was calm". Then silence.
Until the tragic news arrived. The woman was interviewed by investigators in Lecce. He would have said that the relationship began almost two years ago, thanks to frequenting the same gym in Florence where they both lived. In the last year, however, the relationships became very conflictual: he was increasingly obsessive, he didn't control himself. For this reason, almost a month ago she, exasperated, left him. In those same days, the victim's friends avoided being seen by the man in Lorena's company, fearing a violent reaction from the ex. Testimonies all merged into the file for voluntary homicide opened by the Florence prosecutor Antonio Natale, who coordinates the investigations of the Florentine flying squad and who will arrange the autopsy on the two bodies next Monday. The examination will have to establish whether Lorena died before or after the impact on the ground. The autopsy on Vella, however, will help to understand whether the man had taken any narcotic substance. Meanwhile, as the hours pass, the hypothesis of a premeditated attack is gaining ground.
In the man's car, parked in via Panciatichi a few steps from the ex's house, some electrical cable ties were found which would have been used to bind the victim's wrists and the tape. Yesterday afternoon, according to what has been reconstructed, Vella snuck into the garage and after covering the photoelectric cells with tape to prevent the doors from closing, he waited for the woman. Then he attacked her, put her in the trunk of the same car as Lorena and left. The man also placed his ex's bag in the trunk, so she managed to take her cell phone and contact 112 to ask for help: a phone call that lasted about twenty minutes with the emergency number operations center. Right from the recording of the call you would hear, before the call ends, the man saying "What are you doing?". Then Vella, a fit body, would have grabbed the ex, with an athletic but small physique, to throw her into the void from the viaduct. Shortly afterwards he is the one who throws himself and in a video of about ten minutes, shot with a mobile phone by one of the members of the police force who arrived on the A1, there is the entire negotiation conducted to prevent the man from throwing. The images show Vella hovering behind the guardrail, a policewoman and firefighters on their knees. Various voices can be heard trying to convince him and he repeats several times not to come closer.
"Faith we move away and you come" says a voice off screen while others invite him to "take a step back". Until the tragic epilogue. "It is a huge tragedy for the entire community. A family overcome by unbearable pain for the such violent loss of a daughter who everyone defines as an extraordinary and special girl", commented Mario Pede, mayor of Squinzano, who expressed his closeness to her parents and brother. The Florence City Council, at the request of the mayor Sara Funaro, observed a minute's silence. Lorena Isceri, Funaro said "due to the madness linked to what some call love but is obsession, lost her life".
Struck and saddened, the Archbishop of Florence Gherardo Gambelli recalled what he said in the homily of the Solemnity of the Assumption on feminicides: "A common commitment is needed to undermine the mentality of possession and oppression, of non-love, which leads to the psychological and physical suffering of many women to the point of tragedies". Both of their colleagues and gym mates were in disbelief: "When I saw the news with Lorena's photo I was terrible," says Leonardo, who had met her in the gym. "They were frequent visitors but they each trained on their own." With Federico, he says, "I have never spoken", recalling however that recently in the gym "I saw that he was talking a lot with a friend of Lorena, and I wondered if they had broken up".
