fear

Terno d’Isola (Bergamo) – “People are starting to get scared. It’s no longer anyone else’s business, good for a conversation between women, and after ten minutes you don’t think about it anymore; no one can say that they are strangers to him, the shadow of evil slides around each of us and he could touch us.” Dino Buzzati memorial of the massacre in Via San Gregorio, Milan: on 29 November 1946 Rina Fort, aged thirty-one from Friuli, killed her family, wife and three children, her lover Giuseppe Ricciardi. From the night between the 29th and 30th of July, shadows disappear, in the heat, among the island towns of Bergamo. Shadow ofmurderer who took the life of Sharon Verzeni. A killer, perhaps also a night predator, who has no face or name but has already found a companion, a companion called fear.

The shadow joins those who were recently but already consigned to the history of dark achievements. Parents from Terno lived Massimo Bossettidefinitively sentenced to life imprisonment for murder Yara Gambirasio. In nearby Chignolo, an uncultivated field was the outdoor grave of the thirteen-year-old from Brembate di Sopra for three months.

A Terno d’Isola popular theology, inspired by Orobic religion, has transformed the corner of the through Castegnate where Sharon found them four stab wounds. From the building with brown paint, where the carabinieri raided a few days ago I’m catching a garagea male voice filters in: “We’re all waiting for developments, for knowledge. The fear is there but we are available to give our cooperation to those who investigate.” Calm tone, calm, clear of emotions.

But it is enough to cross the street to hear Anna Maria’s voice and meet that fear. “The killer he was walking around with a knife, he wanted to kill him. Once upon a time I was not afraid to go out at night. I haven’t taken any risks for a few years now. There are too many strange people around, a comings and goings that bother you“. The walls of the house as shelter and refuge. A rule that is applied by the three friends who gathered for coffee in a tobacco bar in Piazza Sette Martiri.

“We don’t go out in the afternoon – said the impromptu speaker – and the fear is erased.” Piazza Sette Martiri, the ‘heart’ of a community of eight thousand inhabitants and at the same time a crucial point, a center of problems, a small boundary of a thin border between illegal and civil life, violated several times. Denise has been there for twenty years flower girl in the square and speaking without hesitation to describe a situation of lousy anarchy: “They relate, they fight with each other, they chase each other with knives, throw hailstones at each other. The good thing is that they do it among themselves and we are not involved. It only happened twice. At the small market they broke the doors because they refused to serve drinks, at the Chinese bar they broke the glass window.”

“We would like to highlight some numbers in it irregular conditions they have been definitively removed from our land. I feel like saying this also on behalf of the mayors of neighboring countries. ” Gianluca Sala he is the mayor of Terno d’Isola in his second term. He speaks alongside Raffaella Picenni, deputy mayor and security advisor. “In the last three years a Suit There were fewer reports to the police than before. The problem is represented by people who we turned away several times and would not like to see: they also find themselves here coming from neighboring countries. That’s the one crossroads of discomfort and we have often denied it. Although it is necessary to point out that so far no relationship has emerged between these situations and tragedy Sharon Verzeni. In five years we have invested half a million euros in safety. The cameras (now screened to try to face the murderer Verzeni, dr) has gone from 16 to 54 (, the local police force has gone from 2 to 4 units. Three houses that had been places of bivouacs, pollution and dealing. We have also invested in private surveillance, especially on weekends. The invitation to citizens, at a time like this, when a situation of trust needs to be recreated, is to deny it”.