Naples, Catanzaro murder: mother and partner: "Justice for Umberto, and no discounts for minors."

Naples – "I want justice for my son, without extenuating circumstances. A minor who shoots should be punished the same as an adult." The mother of Umberto Catanzaro, the 23-year-old man killed by mistake last September in the Spanish Quarter of Naples, doesn't mince her words. Before the Juvenile Court, where the first hearing of the trial against two of the three youths involved in the crime opened today, the family's grief transformed into a firm appeal to the authorities.

A cry that tears the veil on youth violence in the city. Rosa Cangialosi says: "Today, minors have become worse than adults; they kill as if it were nothing. There must be no reduction in sentences."

The newborn who never knew her father

At his mother's side, surrounded by the love of her family, is Antonia Rongo, Umberto's girlfriend. In her arms, she holds their one-month-old daughter, born in April, a daughter they both longed for but whom the 23-year-old never got to hold. When Umberto was fighting for his life in a hospital bed—where he died after two months of agony—Antonia was pregnant.

"I used to visit him at the clinic with my pregnant belly," the girl says through tears. "Today I'm asking for justice for him and for our daughter. I'll tell her everything; she must know who her father was and how much she was wanted."

The reconstruction and the thesis of the civil parties

The tragedy occurred last September. According to investigators, Umberto Catanzaro was in a car when the hitmen opened fire: the target of the raid was actually the young man sitting next to him. Umberto, completely uninvolved in the criminal dynamics, was shot by mistake, dying after two months of ordeal in the hospital.

In court, the civil plaintiffs' lawyers immediately took a firm stance. Lawyers Roberto Coppola and Concetta Vernazzaro, representing the victim's mother and partner, along with Sergio Pisani (the lawyer for the father who raised Umberto), spoke clearly of a "heinous crime" and a "premeditated murder," demanding that the state's response be uncompromising and proportionate to the severity of the attack.