Naples – A month before falling victim to the brutal ambush in via Santa Teresa degli Scalzi, Emanuel During, the twenty-year-old murdered on March 15, lived with the awareness of being in grave danger.
A disturbing premonition that the young man had confided in chilling words to his mother, Valeria Brancaccio, via WhatsApp messages.
“Mom I'm dying soon don't forget”, Durante had written to his mother on 13st January last year. “Mom, you will see me dying, believe me because it won’t be long now. Believe me, I know, I feel it”. Words that testify to a palpable terror and a dire premonition.
He had been stabbed a month earlier
The mother, in another message, reveals that she was aware of a previous attack on her son: “Also considering that when you got the stitches I didn’t know,” implying a climate of violence and threat that surrounded the young man.
But the awareness of the danger was not only the mother's. The more than 200 pages of the precautionary order, signed by the investigating judge Federica Colucci, and which led to the arrest of the alleged killer Alexandr Babaylan and alleged instigator Salvatore Pellecchia known as “Dudù”, a leading figure of Sequino clan of the Sanità district, reveal how even Emanuele's father, Vincenzo Durante (the parents are separated), was aware of the delicate situation.
A disturbing picture emerges from the wiretaps. In a conversation between the parents, reference is made to an attack suffered by Emanuele, attributed to his “attitudes of bullying through the use of firearms” against exponents of the ""Health system". "He shot in the middle of the Health system", “Your son Emanuele shot at the 'System'.” Valeria, Durante's mother, adds an even more disturbing piece: “This other one here now thinks that it's someone who had him killed Emanuel Tufano and he took revenge…”.
Even the direct messages between Emanuele and his father confirm a climate of fear and tension. In a chat from March 3, 2025, the father involves his son in the evaluation of a gun in his possession, showing him some photos of it. From subsequent conversations emerges Emanuele's growing fear of being attacked by unidentified individuals.
The chronology of events, reconstructed by investigators, reveals how these fears intensified after Emanuele Durante was summoned to appear before Salvatore Pellecchia. The young man and his family apparently attempted, in vain, to mediate with the "system" of the Sanità district, first through Rita Pirozzi, sister of a well-known criminal figure, and subsequently through a certain “Pinuccio”, identified in Good Herb Joseph, a repeat offender from the Forcella area, head of the Buonerba clan, the famous “long-haired” gangsters, who was released last year after decades of imprisonment, in the past in armed conflict with the Amirante/Sibillo/Gugliano clan.
It was precisely the previous ties between Buonerba and Salvatore Sequino, historical head of the Sanità clan of the same name, that had given Durante hope for a possible resolution of his “big problem.”
The tragic story of Emanuele Durante is part of a trail of blood that saw, a few months earlier, the death of Emanuele Tufano, a fifteen-year-old killed by “friendly fire” during a “stesa” that arose from an argument in the Mercato neighborhood. Two young lives broken, apparently connected by criminal dynamics, alleged revenge and rumors of betrayal that armed the hands of the assassins.
Article published on May 9, 2025 - 07:36 pm
