He advised her to separate, then told her to come back later: in the end, the result, according to the prosecution, was that a woman who wanted to report her husband was unable to do so until the following day, in another location.

A year later, the same woman, Gabriela Trandafir, became a victim of femicide, along with her daughter, Renata. The husband who shot them, Salvatore Montefusco, has since been sentenced to life imprisonment on appeal, and the Carabiniere from the local station who failed to take the initial complaint will now also be tried for failure or refusal to perform official duties.

The petty officer will defend himself directly at the trial because the investigating judge granted his lawyer's request to skip the preliminary hearing, scheduled for this morning, and ordered an immediate trial.

Gabriela and Renata Trandafir were murdered on October 13, 2022, in Cavazzona di Castelfranco Emilia (Modena). The crimes the Carabiniere is accused of date back to July 13, 2021, and the defendant must also answer for failing to proceed with the investigation requested by the Prosecutor's Office within the established timeframe, when the complaint against his spouse was actually filed the following day at another police station.

Essentially, the Prosecutor's Office accuses the soldier of first trying to convince the woman to file only the civil separation suit, and then, faced with her insistence and despite her fear that her husband would harm her and their children, he told her he couldn't receive the complaint at that time and to return in the afternoon. At that point, he allegedly made her wait in the waiting room, where her husband's lawyer arrived. Fearing that Montefusco would find out about her intention to press charges, she gave up and went to file a report at a police station in Bologna the next day.

"We specifically requested a trial because, through the preliminary hearing, we intend to demonstrate the lieutenant's innocence," explains the soldier's defense attorney, Cosimo Zaccaria. "Gabriela and Renata Trandafir's family has not filed any charges against the carabiniere. This proceeding was initiated exclusively by the Prosecutor's Office, whose intentions we share, although we are not the driving force," says attorney Barbara Iannuccelli, who is representing the victims' relatives, who had received a summons for the preliminary hearing as injured parties. The first hearing will be on January 20th.

(Unioneonline)

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