Rome: An Italian businessman has hailed a hero for taking a bullet through the cheek as he tackled a gunman, ending an attack that killed three people including a friend of Italy’s prime minister.
Claudio Campiti, 57, was shooting at residents gathered at a bar in Rome’s Fidene district for a body corporate meeting of a holiday condominium when a local travel agent wrestled him to the ground.
Silvio Paganini, 67, described how he leapt onto the gunman and subdued him before he could continue his rampage.
Italian Carabinieri, paramilitary policemen, patrol in front of a bar where three people died after a man entered and shot in Rome on Sunday.Credit:AP
“He was yelling ‘you’re all mafiosi, I’ll kill you all’,” Paganini told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. “They were moments of pure terror. Campiti fired his first shot, then a second which killed a woman, then another shot at a third woman.
“At that point I saw him turn towards me. I leapt on top of him. He could have killed me.”
The alleged killer had at least 150 more rounds and a second magazine in his pocket for the Glock pistol he had taken from a nearby shooting range when he was stopped. He shot dead three women, one of whom was a friend of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Four other people were wounded, one of whom was in a critical condition yesterday.
Meloni posted a picture of herself alongside Nicoletta Golisano, one of the victims, on Instagram, Reuters reported. “For me she will always be beautiful and happy like this,” Meloni wrote. “It is not right to die like this.”
A resident jumped on the gunman and reportedly averted a worse death toll in Rome on Sunday.Credit:AP
Despite being shot in the cheek, Paganini is expected to make a full recovery.Alessio D’Amato, a regional politician in charge of health, said: “Thanks to his actions, a much higher death toll was averted”.
Campiti reportedly had a history of disagreements with members of the residents’ group, which managed the property in which he lived. He inhabited the partly abandoned skeleton of a villa overlooking Lake Turano in the mountains north-east of Rome, and had complained about the lack of electricity and other services.
Forensic police officers inspect a bar where three people died after a man entered and shot in Rome on Sunday.Credit:AP
On his Facebook page there were images of Hitler and Mussolini and mottos from the Fascist era. It was also reported that he had been left deeply upset after his 14-year-old son died in a sledging accident in the Dolomites a decade ago.
He burst into the residents’ meeting and allegedly shouted: “I’ll kill you all”.
The firing range from which he obtained the Glock has been placed under investigation. Police were examining the facility’s CCTV footage and its signing in and out system.
“We know that he went to the firing range, where he had been a member for several years, and from there came away with the weapon,” said Bruno Frattasi, Rome’s police chief.
“Investigations are underway, the magistrates will establish who was responsible.”
Campiti is accused of three counts of murder.
The Telegraph, London
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