Catania, the carabiniere who had collected the complaints of the girl killed by Antonino Sciuto: “Her death left me a huge void”
“It’s like I’ve lost a younger sister. Vanessa’s death has left me with a huge void ». Those who live and work alongside the Lieutenant Corrado Marcì she heard him repeat these words several times later the terrible night of Aci Trezza. Vanessa Zappalà last Sunday was murdered with seven gunshots by former comrade Antonino Sciuto, who then hanged himself. From the folds of yet another femicide emerges the story of the relationship between Vanessa and the commander of the Trecastagni station, the town where the victim lived. A relationship that allowed the girl to resist in the storm of fear, but that was not enough to save her.
The phone calls
Vanessa called and Marcì answered her cell phone at all hours of the day. The line was always open and direct, with no intermediate passages or switchboard operators to act as a filter, as required by the protocol for the “red code”. Sometimes Vanessa on the phone with the carabiniere he couldn’t hold back the tears. «A holy man, a father of a family», thus describes Carmelo, Vanessa’s father who today will be able to pray on his daughter’s coffin. The Prosecutor did not consider the autopsy necessary and ordered the restitution of the body. The funeral will be celebrated tomorrow, at 7 pm, in the Sanctuary of the Saints Martyrs Alfio, Filadelfo and Cirino in Trescastagni.
Lieutenant Macrì has collected the fragility of a young woman forced to defend herself from a violent man and at the same time her strength and desire to resist. For the inhabitants of a small town like Trecastagni, the commander of the carabinieri station is a point of reference. For Vanessa it was something more, he was an older brother. The soldier who is 48 years old, ten of which spent in Tremestieri, gave her advice to try to protect himself from a psychopath who swore he loved her and instead turned into an executioner.
“Don’t go out alone”
Vanessa had adhered to his advice even the night she was killed. “Don’t go out alone and don’t go to isolated places,” the carabiniere always repeated. It is no coincidence that when Sciuto grabbed her by the hair and unloaded seven gunshots at her, Vanessa herself walking with friends at the small port of Aci Trezza. Marcì has collected the complaint of Vanessa, the outburst that goes beyond the stamped paper, has verified its reliability. He was the first to realize the nightmare in which she had fallen, watching the videos of the mobile phone with which the woman he had filmed the ex during the stalking and the notepad in which he noted the times and streets where they had occurred. It was the commander Macrì ad arrest him last June, when Vanessa had seen him skidding under the house in the car.
“I was terrified, I went to the garage, I parked the car and in the meantime I called the captain,” said Vanessa in the complaint. The lieutenant wasted no time. In the five minutes they were hoping for, they stayed in line. For Marcì it was a way to be sure that nothing serious was happening and in the meantime she was giving him the information about Sciuto’s car. Thus it was that the carabiniere managed to arrest him at the end of a brief chase through the streets of the town. After three days under house arrest, the judge for preliminary investigations imposed him as the only one no approach.
The last words
For a period Marcì was a guardian angel for Vanessa who, after the denunciation, as her cousins Deborah and Emanuela tell us, “took courage and went back out”. The worst seemed to be over. Sciuto had slipped away. It seemed, in fact. Because Sunday night he put his crazy plan into action. “Go away because I’m calling the marshal”: Vanessa’s last words before she died. This time the carabiniere was unable to protect her. And today he tells the men who work with him about the pain he feels for not having been able to save “a younger sister”.
August 26, 2021 (change August 26, 2021 | 06:58)
© Time.News