An ordinary Saturday (February 14) afternoon turned into an absolute nightmare in a matter of seconds. Around 1:00 p.m. with at the exit from a supermarket in the Italian city of Bergamo, a man tried to kidnap a 1.5-year-old girl, causing a huge panic among the customers present. Fortunately, the quick reaction of the parents prevented the worst, writes the website.
The mother strongly resisted the attacker and immediately started calling for help, while the father, who was far away, quickly intervened and pacified the perpetrator. However, in the great confusion and during the struggle, the little girl suffered a fractured femur. How exactly did this shocking incident happen? The course of events, reconstructed by the Italian state police thanks to the footage from security cameras, is chilling.
As the family – a mother, father and their young daughter – walked out the door of the store, he pounced on the child 37-year-old citizen of Romania. This is a homeless man who had no criminal record. With unprecedented brutality, he grabbed the little girl’s legs and tried to forcibly tear her from her mother’s arms, to then drag him back into the bowels of the mall. “I heard a truly heartbreaking, desperate female scream,” one of the eyewitnesses described the dramatic moments.
Only a fraction of a second passed from this scream to the immediate and decisive reaction of the parents. While the mother did her best to defend herself, the father immediately intervened. A moment later, he was joined by security guards and bystanders – among them a doctor, who immediately provided first aid.
Together, they immobilized the attacker on the ground and held him until the arrival of police patrols. After arriving at the scene, the police secured the injured child and took the 37-year-old man to the police headquarters.
The man faces extremely serious charges: after the completion of the initial investigation, he was arrested on suspicion of of the crime of kidnapping with aggravating circumstances (as it was committed against a person younger than 14 years) and of bodily harm with aggravating circumstances. It is currently fully available to the judicial authorities, which have approved the police’s actions so far and ordered the perpetrator to be prosecuted.
