Naples, murder of little Samuele Gargiulo: sentence reduction for the killer

Napoli – Important procedural turning point in the case of little Samuele Gargiulo, the 4-year-old boy who fell from the balcony of his home in via Foria on September 17, 2021.

In the new appeal trial, the third section of the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Naples sentenced Mariano Cannio, the factotum accused of the murder, to 12 years of imprisonment. The sentence is six years less than the 18 years inflicted in the first instance with an abbreviated trial.

Excluding the aggravating circumstance of the diminished defense, the generic mitigating circumstances were granted

Although the charge of voluntary homicide was fully confirmed, the judges excluded the aggravating circumstance of the victim's diminished defense. Furthermore, the Court deemed it appropriate to grant the defendant the mitigating circumstances, considering them to prevail over the aggravating circumstance of the victim's minority.

This "cut" of six years comes after the "insanity" had already been recognized in the previous appeal trial in Cannio.

The verdict was greeted with moderate satisfaction by the family of the very young victim, assisted by the lawyer Domenico De Rosa. The child's mother was also present in the courtroom yesterday, attending with composed grief the reading of the ruling.

Cannio's shocking confession and the details of the arrest

The murder of little Samuele shocked the city. The investigations quickly reached a turning point thanks to the confession of Mariano Cannio. “Suddenly I picked him up and went out onto the balcony… once I got outside with the baby in my arms I leaned out and dropped the little one. I immediately heard screams coming from below and I was scared, knowing that I was the cause of what was happening,” were his first words.

Cannio then tried to escape, as he himself recounted: “I ran home and went to eat a pizza in the Sanità district”. The police, suspecting that he had taken refuge in an aunt's house on Via Duomo, used a ruse to get him to open the door: after ringing the bell repeatedly without an answer, they left an electricity bill under the door. Cannio took it away, and at that point the officers were able to break in and stop him.

During the investigations, it emerged that Cannius he occasionally cleaned Samuele's family home in Via Foria and that he had hidden a diagnosis of schizophrenia, for which he had been treated for some time in a mental health center. Despite this complex clinical picture, at all levels of judgment, Cannio was deemed capable of understanding and willing.

The new appeal verdict closes a painful chapter for the Gargiulo family and for the entire community, although the pain for the loss of little Samuele remains unchanged.