Modena, attack by around fifty students on an MD supermarket: looting born from a challenge on social media

Modena – They found themselves leaving school, around 2pm, and broke into a discount store, looting the shelves and creating agitation among customers and employees. Dividing between those who steal and those who film. They put drinks, chips, sandwiches in their backpacks and then head straight for the exit without paying, many with their faces covered.

Modena, the students' attack on an MD supermarket: the looting challenge born on social media

The episode took place last Tuesday in Modena, in an MD supermarket on Via Rainusso, on the outskirts of the city, and involved around fifty young people, many of whom recorded videos of the raid which were then published on social networks. A sort of social looting challenge. The raid lasted about ten minutes, during which the boys took drinks, food and other products from the shelves, while some covered their faces so as not to be recognised. All this before the eyes of the staff, in disbelief and paralyzed in the face of the sea of ​​marauding kids.

Modena, the students' attack on an MD supermarket: the looting challenge born on social media

It is not the first time that similar incidents have occurred in the store, but never with so many participants. According to the market staff, they had in fact targeted the business, so much so that many of them had been seen wandering around the shelves even the day before, but had then given up.

The police who intervened on site are reconstructing what happened also through the images recorded by the surveillance cameras.

The mayor of Modena Massimo Mezzetti spoke on the episode, expressing solidarity with the workers at the store. "What happened to the MD in Via Rainusso is a serious matter - he declares - the gang logic can manifest itself in theft, as in this case, but it can also be directed against people, with much more serious consequences. However, one fact must make us reflect: we are faced with very young people who act with the belief that they can go unpunished. In Modena we have demonstrated, thanks to the joint work of the police and the local police, that even minors who commit crimes are identified and held accountable". According to the mayor of Modena, "the time has come to seriously address the issue of juvenile deviance and the sense of impunity. Continuing to introduce new crimes and increase penalties, as the Government has done, is evidently not enough. It is a problem that affects cities large and small and requires concrete responses. Simply saying 'let's throw them in jail' solves nothing. We must act on the three 'R's: responsibility, reparation and re-education. We need certainty of responsibility, the awareness, for these kids, that every action has consequences consequences, and rapid and concrete re-education and reparative paths, through which those who commit these acts are called to understand the damage caused and to give something back to the community", concludes Mezzetti.

Meanwhile, the videos are circulating on social media, shared by the kids themselves - first of all on TikTok - with the fear that they will trigger emulative gestures.