Boys mistaken for thieves and killed in Ercolano, the murderer had "A nervous breakdown after the theft suffered". For the medical consultant of the Prosecutor's Office, the accused "is capable of understanding and willing". Cross-examination on November 3
Vincenzo Palumbo, 4, was the victim of a “significant psychological dysfunction” that arose after the burglary at his home on September 2021, 54.
The man is on trial in Naples for the aggravated double voluntary homicide of Tullio Pagliaro and Giuseppe Fusella, the two boys from Portici killed by gunshots in Ercolano, on the night between 28 and 29 October 2021, while they were in the car in front of the house of the defendant, who had mistaken them for two thieves.
Speaking today before the judges of the Court of Assizes of Naples was a consultant of Palumbo's lawyer, the lawyer Giovanni Abet, the psychiatrist Alfonso Tramontano. Today, in courtroom 115, the judges of the first section of the Court of Assizes of Naples, listened only to the doctor who answered a single question asked by Palumbo's defense lawyer. It was expected that a woman would also be heard, an eyewitness, the last person to have seen the two boys still alive.
The woman – due to notification problems – will be heard at the next hearing, on November 3, when the cross-examination of the consultant will also take place. According to the psychiatrist Tramontano, the defendant is completely capable of understanding and willing even if the theft, with the criminals managing to enter his home at night, caused Palumbo to have a real nervous breakdown that reached its peak the night Tullio and Giuseppe were killed.
“The clinical-documentary evidence reported and the forensic arguments developedyou, – writes Tramontano in the conclusions of his expert opinion – support the recognition in the events of September 4th (and in the further intrusion after about a month) of the factor that triggers the described psychopathological sequelae, corrodes the normal functioning (or, in any case, the functioning that has been dominant for fifty years) of Palumbo and causes, upon the recurrence of an activating stimulus, the dramatic worsening of events by inducing a stress-related Abnormal Neurotic Reaction”.
“This psychopathological condition - for the consultant of the defendant's defense attorney – takes on undoubted forensic importance due to the evident fracture with Palumbo's lifestyle, due to the clear, sharp and significant disproportion between causal event and response, due to the presence of a narrowing of consciousness and dysmnesia, due to the presence of preconceived and prevalent ideas, due to the absence of recited or finalized alterations of instincts, due to the overflowing emotional participation and due to the relatively rapid mental and behavioral reorganization after the crime".
Article published on 11 October 2022 - 17:00
