Two cars set on fire and six gunshots fired at the wrong house: a night of terror in Dolianova. The two Fords (a Focus and a C-Max) set ablaze around 3:00 AM yesterday morning on Via Mazzini and Via Garibaldi belong to Michael Valdes, a 32-year-old with a history of property crimes. The house, however, isn't his: it's the neighbor's. The shooter used a 7.65 caliber pistol and aimed at a window: the explosions shattered the silence of the night, the bullets puncturing an already poorly maintained screen and damaging an old anodized aluminum window frame. Fortunately, no one was injured: but exactly one month after the attempted murder of truck driver Roberto Isola, the alarm level in the town is at its highest.
The video
What happened is revealed by footage from a security camera installed on Via Garibaldi. It's a story that begins halfway: when the arsonist arrives on the scene, the Ford Focus is already ablaze on Via Mazzini (about eighty meters away). In the video, a man can be seen fiddling with a container, pouring its contents (gasoline, investigators from the Dolianova Carabinieri Company later determined) onto the Ford C-Max, parked directly in front of Michael Valdes's house, and then fumbling clumsily for a lighter. He finds it and starts the fire.
His gestures are neither confident nor casual. In fact, the man is in serious danger of being engulfed in flames. Then he pulls out a gun and points it not at Valdes' house but at the one across the street, a very interesting mistake for the investigation: six shots fired, and then he runs away.
Manhunt
The Carabinieri are now trying to identify the perpetrator as well as any potential instigators.
The area where the incident occurred has been under the military's scrutiny for some time because several factors suggest that intense drug dealing activity is thriving in those streets: and it is precisely this area that is being looked at in search of a possible motive.
The ambush a month ago
Obviously, the past of the owners of the burned cars is also being looked into.
