Man confesses to wounding Cristina Stillitano with a compressed air rifle in Rome

The man was identified by investigators through the records of an armory where he bought a rifle at the beginning of September. Initially unavailable, he then presented himself to the police

The person responsible for wounding the woman whose arm was hit by a plummet fired the other evening in Via della Giuliana in Rome, not far from the Vatican, confessed.

The man, a 50-year-old from Rome, admitted during interrogation that he had shot and was reported free for injuries. The police have now gone to his home to seize the weapon with which he allegedly shot.

The investigators traced back to him through the records of an armory where he bought a rifle at the beginning of September. The man, initially unavailable, then showed up at the barracks. The prosecutor's office has opened a case for injuries.

"If the responsibility of this person were confirmed, a threat that loomed over the entire neighborhood would have been put to an end", Cristina Stillitano, the journalist and writer injured two days ago, commented before the confession. "The police deserve commendation for the speed and professionalism demonstrated", concluded Stillitano.

The investigations

From the first hours after the wounding, the Carabinieri started investigations, combing the entire area involved inch by inch. The specialized personnel of the Scientific Investigations Department (RIS) operated at the crime scene using modern technologies for three-dimensional surveys, which are essential for accurately reconstructing the trajectory of the bullet. The careful inspection also made it possible to seize several plummets in the area and to detect traces attributable to similar episodes. The Carabinieri investigators have also started a careful mapping of specialized commercial activities. The control of the data on sales made in the armories of the area made it possible to identify the purchase of a compressed air rifle, completed in the first days of September by a man residing in Via della Giuliana. The man has been identified and is now in the Carabinieri barracks of the Company of Rome San Pietro with his lawyer and the PM of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Rome is questioning him.

Three more cases

Cristina Stillitano underwent surgery and is fine. The increasingly concrete hypothesis is that his was only the latest in a series of cases that all occurred in the same neighborhood. There would be at least four reports. After learning of the Stillitano case, the accountant Angela Perrone decided to report what she had suffered, saying that she felt "a movement of air at the waist", and then a pain in her calf: "I was grazed". The woman did not suffer serious injuries but only a bruise on her leg and this led her to downgrade the episode to the prank of a boy and not to initially file a complaint. Another testimony came from the owners of a restaurant in Via della Giuliana: two Spanish tourists screamed after hearing the shot and subsequently fled. A fourth complaint came from a man who heard the shots of a compressed air weapon going off among the leaves of a tree not far from him.

The bullet of metallic material

It is thought that the shots came from the building opposite the sidewalk where the victims were hit or grazed while walking, not from close range, from the street or from a moving car. This was confirmed by the analysis of the bullet extracted on the morning of September 16th from Cristina Stillitano's arm, made of metallic material and therefore compatible with a weapon capable of shooting from afar, such as a rifle. The carabinieri carried out surveys on the pavement where the shots arrived and then searched the building on the other side of the street from which the shots apparently started.