Naples - A wrong target: the baby killer's confession and the investigations by the Flying Squad, coordinated first by the Anti-Mafia Directorate and then by the Juvenile Prosecutor's Office, have clarified that the real target of the attack was not Marco Pio Salomone, but his friend sitting in the front seat of the Panda, while the 19-year-old was in the back.
The 15-year-old, a self-confessed criminal, reportedly said he approached the car parked on foot on Via Generale Francesco Pinto, in the Arenaccia area, recognized the group of "rivals," and fired a single gunshot into the passenger compartment.
The victim was shot in the forehead, rescued by friends, and rushed to the hospital, where he died a few hours later from the severity of the wound, which proved inoperable.
The boy, a resident of the Piazza Carlo III area, had a minor police record related to drug dealing, which places the murder within the context of tensions over control of the city's youth nightlife.
But the murder, according to a version of events likely based on convenience, was caused by "one look too many." This is what the victim's friends reportedly told investigators and police detectives who interviewed them after the murder.
The version of the disagreement over trivial matters doesn't entirely convince investigators, who believe the motive lies in friction over drug dealing. All the young men involved, according to what has been learned, are in fact involved in drug dealing.
The minor, who appeared at the police station with his lawyer declaring "I shot him," is charged with aggravated murder and illegal possession of a firearm.
However, the crucial question remains: who put a gun in the hands of a fifteen-year-old, who procured it, and who, if any, made it disappear after the attack or regained custody of it.
Investigators are working with local surveillance cameras and the boy's network of contacts to determine whether he actually acted alone during the execution phase, or whether there was an adult behind the scenes exploiting minors as armed workers.
The 15-year-old's mother, whose entire family is of humble origins and far removed from organized crime circles, said she was shocked and unable to explain how her son could have come to this, a sign of a profound rift between the adult world and the parallel world in which many teenagers in working-class neighborhoods grow up.
The murder of Marco Pio Salomone is part of a series of incidents in which the ages of both victims and perpetrators are drastically reduced, with young men barely older than children handling weapons and settling drug-dealing scores as if they were adults with long criminal careers.
Neighborhoods like Arenaccia and the areas around Piazza Carlo III demonstrate how the drug-dealing hubs of nightlife have now become places of deviant youth socialization, where identity and prestige depend on membership in armed groups rather than on school or work.
Behind each single attack lies a context of school dropout, lack of opportunity, criminal patterns perceived as the only quick way to redemption, and families often left alone, unable to compete with the lure of easy money and guns.
Tackling youth crime in Naples therefore means acting on multiple fronts: targeted repression against those who arm minors, but also serious investment in schools, social services, neighborhood education programs, and drug-dealing exit programs, because every "baby killer" is also the product of a collective void that the Camorra fills with violence.
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