A cruel fate. Salvatore Bennardo, 23 -year -old “champion” of Morrone, was killed on July 18, 1983 by a commando of Sicari. He traveled with teammates on an A112 and was returning from Fusaldo where he had taken the field. Suddenly the car was joined by a Fiat 127 from which a gragnuola of bullets started who killed the young athlete and injured a footballer on his arm who was sitting next to him. The repentant Roberto Pagano, 12 years later, will explain that it had been an ambush of ‘Ndrangheta, decided by the gang led by the boss Franco Pino, specifying that the attacks were wrong by making fire on the car of the players and not against the car on which, instead, the exponent of an adverse clan passed through. The murder remained unpunished because, at the end of the maxiprocess “Garden”, the accused of the crime was acquitted and the verdict later became definitive. Alba Bennardo sister of the victim, recalls that terrible summer day. «Salvatore returned from Fuscaldo after playing a football match. He was sitting on the rear seat of 112 and had a partner next to it. He did not attend risk environments, had no dangerous friendships and lived at home with us by dedicating himself exclusively to sport. At first he played in Ternana but, then, the company had economic problems and, thus, returned home being hired by Morrone. He was good my brother. Of that day I have the fixed image of the arrival of the carabinieri: they knocked on the door telling us that he had had an accident. We discovered, after half an hour, that it was not true ».
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