(Adnkronos) – Foreign minister Antonio Tajani is travelling to the northern cities of Modena and Bologna on Monday to express solidarity with the local community and individuals who stopped a man who drove his car at high speed into pedestrians in central Modena at the weekend, reportedly hitting over a dozen people. Tajani is also due to visit several hospitalised victims of the attack, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Tajani has suggested to interior minister Matteo Piantedosi that Luca Signorelli, one of four people who apprehended the 31-year-old driver during Saturday’s attack and was stabbed by the suspect, should receive official recognition “for the courageous act he performed,” said the statement.
Media reports cited Signorelli as saying he was helping a woman who was badly injured by the car-ramming when the driver tried to flee and managed to immobilise him, but was stabbed in the heart and the head as he did so.
Signorelli was among four people who helped apprehend the driver, and who included two Egyptians, according to media reports.
Two women lost their legs in the car-ramming, during which the car was driven into pedestrians at 100 kilometers per hour. The two women are among eight people admitted to hospital after the attack, several of whom remain in a critical condition.
Before visiting Modena’s Baggiovara hospital and the Maggiore Hospital in Modena, Tajani will meet with the government’s top representative in Modena, Fabrizia Triolo, the Emilia-Romagna region’s governor Fabio Braglia, and Modena’s mayor, Massimo Mezzetti, the foreign ministry stated.
Trioli was cited by media reports at the weekend as saying the car-ramming suspect is a second-general Italian born in Bergamo, has a degree in business adminstration but is currently unemployed. In 2022 the man was referred to a mental health center for “schizoid (personality) disorders” but after a period of observation, authorities lost track of him, Trioli said.
Italy’s premier Giorgia Meloni and president Sergio Mattarella visited victims of the car-ramming at the Maggiore the Baggiovara hospitals on Sunday. On Saturday, Meloni thanked the Modena residents who “courageously intervened to stop the perpetrator, and to the police for their intervention”.
