We are Castellammare, it's evening and in those hours there is a boy - he is 16 years old - who is pervaded by darkness in his soul. The place is the hospital San Leonardo the Carabinieri of the mobile radio section of the Stabia company – alerted by 112 – intervene for a boy in a state of agitation.
A few minutes later, the soldiers are in front of the emergency room. In the square, they find the boy in a panic and there is a strong smell of gasoline. The 16-year-old has covered himself in flammable liquid and in his right hand he has a lighter, threatening to set himself on fire. It seems like the gesture of a young man possessed but in reality it hides a tragic story made of unspeakable suffering.
A cry for help for a boy who has to deal with a problem much bigger than him. The Carabinieri approach the boy and throw themselves on him. They snatch the lighter from his hands and take him to the barracks. A few seconds in the offices that culminate in a perhaps liberating cry and a family story still to be reconstructed.
The boy's mother is in fact in the hospital. The woman is hospitalized for injuries and the one who beat her, the military will discover, was her husband. The carabinieri are proceeding according to the dictates of the "red code" thus understanding the gesture of that boy who perhaps in that blatant and apparently insane way wanted to ask for help to put an end to the torments suffered not only by him but also and above all by his mother, a victim of gender violence, whom he was unable to defend from his own father.
Article published on 23 January 2024 - 10:06
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