Voluntary homicide and attempted homicide. These are the accusations made yesterday by the Reggio Calabria prosecutor's office against Francesco Putortìthe 48-year-old man arrested by the flying squad and the police for the murder of Alfio Stancampiano, the 30-year-old from Catania abandoned on Monday morning in the gardens of the Morelli hospital in Reggio Calabria shortly before dying, and for injuring another 46-year-old man now hospitalized in Messina hospital. During the interrogation which took place at the police station on the night between Monday and Tuesday, Putortì, however, defended himself by supporting his version of events. «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.” 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 reacted by stabbing them and then called the police to report the intrusion and the theft of around 1500 euros.
“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 everything 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.”
Read the complete article in the paper edition of Gazzetta del Sud – Reggio Calabria