Passers-by mowed down by a motorist in Modena: this is the theory favored by the authorities

“To date, what emerges most clearly is this personal situation of a psychiatric nature,” said the Minister of the Interior on Sunday after a meeting at the prefecture of Modena.

“I am not trying to minimize,” added Minister Matteo Piantedosi (right), former prefect of neighboring Bologna. “There are sometimes situations in which the reasons overlap, whether someone is acting for terrorism or for other reasons. Let’s let the investigators work.”

“Isolated episode”

“The city should be reassured from this point of view, in the sense that it is a dramatic, tragic, isolated episode,” underlined the minister, welcoming a “choral and effective reaction from citizens in primis, then from all institutions”.

The car entered a downtown street at high speed in the middle of Saturday afternoon, according to video surveillance images broadcast by the media.

The driver then tried to flee, but four passers-by chased and overpowered him. Faced with them, he took out a knife before being arrested.

“I made it clear that Italy is not dead,” testified Sunday one of these passers-by, Luca Signorelli, injured by a stab wound to the face.

“I immediately started chasing him”: In Modena, a passerby stops the driver who had hit eight pedestrians

“I told my son to run after him, he blocked him and dropped his knife to the ground,” Osama Shalaby, a 56-year-old Egyptian mason, testified in the Italian media.

Three injured people were still in serious condition on Sunday morning.

The President of the Italian Council Giorgia Meloni canceled a planned visit to Cyprus in order to go to the bedside of the wounded in Modena with the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella.

“Heroes, deep down, are not extraordinary people: they are ordinary men and women who, at a decisive moment, place what is right before themselves,” Giorgia Meloni declared on X after having congratulated Luca Signorelli.

The driver, an economics graduate born in 1995 and unknown to the police, “had been taken care of in a mental health center for schizoid disorders” in 2022, said the city prefect, Fabrizia Triolo, during a press conference Saturday.

Questioned by the police, the young man appeared “confused” and did not answer questions, according to Italian media. His home near Modena was searched without finding any signs of Islamic radicalization.

Sunday demonstration

The Italian political class reacted immediately, with the right, center and left emphasizing the courage of the passers-by who intervened to stop the driver.

The League, the far-right party in Italy’s ruling coalition, has called into question “the integration of second-generation citizens”.

The mayor of Modena Massimo Mezzetti (center-left) suggested that the people of Modena meet on Sunday evening at 7:00 p.m. in solidarity with the affected families in the city’s main square.

“We saw him with a weapon in his hand”: a car hits pedestrians in Italy, several injured

“It’s time to bring the community together (…) and take an example from these citizens who, yesterday, with civic spirit, courage and self-sacrifice, intervened to block the author of the act and hand him over to the police,” the mayor declared to AFP.

“The best response is this, faced with the scavengers of social networks, who claim to use this extremely serious fact for political purposes, is the photo (of the saviors, editor’s note) with the two Italians, the two Egyptians, then the Pakistanis who arrive and control the driver”, concluded Massimo Mezzetti.