«When I returned home I saw a person passing by, I panicked. I got scared and grabbed a knife. The two subjects who were inside the house attacked me and I defended myself. While they were running away, the two thieves dropped their guns.” He would have defended himself like this Francesco Putortì, the 48 year old man arrested by the flying squad and the carabinieri for the murder of Alfio Stancampianothe 30-year-old from Catania abandoned on Monday morning in the gardens of the Morelli hospital in Reggio Calabria shortly before dying, and for having injured another 46-year-old subject now admitted to the Messina hospital during the interrogation which took place at the police station during the night between Monday and Tuesday. The deceased man and the injured man, also from Catania, together with a third person would have attempted a robbery in a private home in Rosario Valanidi, on the southern outskirts of Reggio Calabria. The two, however, were surprised by the owner, Francesco Putortì, who he reacted by stabbing them and then called the police to report the intrusion and the theft of around 1,500 euros. At first Putortì failed to tell the investigators about the fight he had with the two thieves and then confessed it when, after an hour and a half
from the facts, Alfio Stancampiano was found almost lifeless in front of the hospital.
By this evening, the judge for preliminary investigations must decide whether to validate the arrest ordered by the prosecutor Giovanni Bombardieriby the added Giuseppe Lombardo and by the prosecutor Nunzio De Salvo towards Putortì who has no criminal record and is now locked up in the Arghillà prison. “The accusation of voluntary homicide contested by the Prosecutor's Office seems excessive and absurd to us,” argued the lawyer Maurizio Condipodero, Putortì's defender, according to which «at most it could be a negligent excess of self-defense if it is demonstrated that the injuries derive from the struggle and nothing else. We await the investigating judge's decision with confidence.”
Tomorrow the Ris carabinieri will be in the house
Tomorrow morning at 9.30 the Messina Ris carabinieri are scheduled to enter the house in Oliveto, in the Rosario Valanidi area of Reggio Calabria, inside which Francesco Putortì surprised the thieves, originally from Catania, who had entered the house and stabbed them at the end of a fight. The RIS investigations inside the house were ordered by the Reggio Calabria Prosecutor's Office to check if there are traces of blood, to reconstruct the exact dynamics of the dispute and how it degenerated into the stabbing of the thieves by the owner of the house, a butcher with no criminal record who is now locked up in Arghillà prison. In fact, the prosecutors arrested him for voluntary manslaughter and attempted murder. A provision that will have to be validated by June 1st by the investigating judge Giovanna Sergi who, for this evening, will set the hearing for the new interrogation of Francesco Putortì.