Rome. Half past five in the morning. Two jewellers get into their car with the new collection they are taking to Munich for a jewellery fair. These are the entrepreneurs, the kind of Italian family firm that makes up so much of the Italian economy through thick and thin. The brothers are armed - as they should be carrying 75 million euros-worth of preziosi.
They note a white van as they drive up the ramp from the garage and are ready when it is rammed into the side of their car. Before the pistol-waving robbers can wrench open the car doors the brother in the passenger seat has shot two of them - one dead and another wounded.
That jewellers and gold couriers go armed is widely known and wholly accepted; the brothers have not been detained or charged. The third robber is being hunted by Carabinieri throughout the neighbourhood - they are even using helicopters over nearby open countryside. There has merely been an official announcement that the dead robber was a Roman and had a long criminal record.
"Speak as you eat." is the Roman saying. So they did.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
Good for them. Who had tipped off the robbers? Is the desire to know the answer to that the reason for their not bumping off the third one?
Later news says that the two wounded robbers - the one who ran away has been found in a Rome hospital being treated for gunshot wounds - are criminals, one of whom murdered a goldsmith in Florence in the early 1990s. Another led a criminal gang that was broken up at the turn of the century.
They sound like the kind of people who keep themselves informed about the movements of jewellers and goldsmiths.
What!! You mean armed robbers have no yuman rites in Italy? In the UK the jewellers would be facing several charges - from carrying and discharging firearms, to dangerous driving - and of course infringements of some criminals' yuman rites. Where I live the police have little hesitation in gunning down armed robbers, and others who open fire on them, and do so on an almost daily basis. There is rarely an outcry from the public or the Press over such actions; just the opposite in fact (unless a mistake is made and the victim turns out to be unarmed or mistaken identity).
Might be an idea to try to recruit a few Italian police officers as the proposed English Police Commissioners in the UK.
The police are searching for a fourth person. The person you asked about straight away Dearieme, who tipped off the gang.And, yes, the one who at first got away is helping the police with their enquiries.
They have the right to go out robbing, Nomad, and the jewellers and gold merchants have the right to stop them. Those sound like very human rights to me.
I think the head of the EU paramilitary policing force is an Italian - got the job on the basis of experience probably.
Post a Comment