2 Officers Are Shot as Italy’s Government Is Sworn In
Simona Granati/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Police officers rushed to aid a
fellow officer who was shot in the neck during an attack outside the
Italian prime minister's office on Sunday.
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO // Published: April 28, 2013
ROME — Two military police officers were shot and wounded on Sunday in a
crowded square outside the prime minister’s office close to where the
new government of Enrico Letta was being sworn in.
The shooting was broadcast live by the state broadcaster RAI, which had a
television crew in the square in front of Palazzo Chigi, where the
ministers were to go after the ceremony at the presidential palace.
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Italians who had tuned in to the swearing-in ceremony of the
long-awaited government — finally formed nine weeks after national
elections — watched the unfolding events.
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What was supposed to be a day of celebration, marking the beginning of
the new government, quickly turned into a national drama. The square in
front of Palazzo Chigi was cordoned off, while ambulances and police
cars blocked traffic in one of Rome’s busiest downtown areas.
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Inside the
palace, the ceremony continued undisturbed; most of the ministers were
not made aware of the shooting, which occurred about half a mile away,
until after the ceremony was over.
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The man believed to have shot the two officers was caught. Authorities
identified him as Luigi Preiti, born in 1964 in Calabria and a resident
of Piedmont.
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“I heard seven or eight shots,” said Enrica Agostini, an RAI reporter
who was in the square when the shooting occurred, describing the
subsequent panic. “I was pushed back into Palazzo Chigi. The police was
screaming, ‘it’s an attack, it’s an attack.'”
One officer was wounded in the throat and the other in the leg, an
official with the military police said. The wounds did not appear to be
life threatening. Mr. Preiti was also shot, the official said.
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A woman, passing by, was also hit but was not seriously injured, according to reports.
At a news conference, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said an
investigation would be conducted but the incident appeared to be an
“isolated gesture.”
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Mr. Alfano said that the shooter, an unemployed 49-year-old man, had
intended to commit suicide, but told officers that he was unable to do
so because he had run out of bullets.
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After the swearing-in, Mr. Letta met with ministers in a first scheduled
cabinet meeting on Sunday afternoon. The new government will face a
confidence vote in Parliament this week.
The former interior minister, Anna Maria Cancellieri, who was sworn in
Sunday as justice minister, told reporters that the act had been carried
out “by someone who is unbalanced.”
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The shooting rattled Italy, already unsettled by a period of instability
in the aftermath of inconclusive national elections that hobbled
efforts to form a government. It also brought back memories of the
so-called “years of lead,” the period of social and political turmoil in
the 1970s and early 1980s marked by dozens of acts of terrorism carried
out by left-wing and right-wing radicals.
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In recent years, groups that modeled themselves after the Red Brigade
terrorists of that time have carried out sporadic attacks, and have
killed two Italian labor reform specialists. In recent years, too, a
spate of homemade bombs have exploded at different tax agency offices, a
protest against a fiscal system seen by some as too onerous. But there
has been little social tension of the kind that marked Italy a few
decades ago.
