Stories
Davide Bifolco
Davide Bifolco was shot and killed on the streets of Traiano, Naples, in the early hours of the morning on 5thSeptember 2014. He was not quite seventeen.Following a tip-off from the neighbouring district of Soccavo the evening before, two Carabinieri police officers in a patrol car were on the lookout for a 24-year-old called Arturo Equabile, who had breached his house arrest while awaiting sentencing for theft. Just before midnight more details came through: Equabile was on a scooter, a Honda SH300.
Later, well into the night, the two Carabinieri caught sight of a Honda SH300 scooter with three people on it. These were Vincenzo Ambrosio, driving, with Davide Bifolco and Salvatore Triunfo (an 18-year-old with previous minor offences to his name) riding pillion. They signalled for the scooter to stop, but it didn't. A chase ensued, as far as Cinthia Street, where the patrol car hit the scooter and knocked it over. Vincenzo, whom the Carabinieri mistook for Equabile, got to his feet and managed to get away. One of the two officers got out of the car and seized Triunfo with his left hand, holding his pistol in his right. Davide was in front of them; the Carabinieri police officer fired and hit the boy square in the chest. The time was 2:45 am Davide was rushed into San Paolo hospital, only to be certified dead on arrival.
Public Prosecutor Manuela Persico was appointed immediately to head the inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Davide Bifolco, along with two deputy prosecutors Nunzio Fragliasso and Luigi Frunzio. The Carabinieri officer that fired the shot, who was aged 32 with ten years of service, was charged with manslaughter. In his defence, he claimed the pistol went off completely accidentally when he tripped on a kerb amidst the general confusion.
The picture painted by Fabio Anselmo, the lawyer appointed by the Bifolco family – the same lawyer who defended Stefano Cucchi and Federico Aldrovandi – was completely different. His reconstruction of the event was based on eyewitness accounts, in particular that of Vincenzo Ambrosino. According to Salvatore Triunfo's testimony, the youths didn't stop when ordered to by the Carabinieri because there were three of them on the scooter and they had no crash helmets, driving license or insurance. Also, both of them maintained that the officer deliberately pointed his gun at Bifolco.
Anselmo also showed video footage, filmed by the indoor and outdoor security cameras of a nearby game room, in which the second officer, the driver of the patrol car, could be seen, pistol in hand, pursuing a man and then bursting into the room and ordering everybody inside to freeze, facing the wall. This was explained by the Carabinieri as an attempt to catch and arrest whom they thought to be Equabile.
The family managed to have further tests done (CAT scan, MRI scan, specimen sampling), in addition to the autopsy tests, and requested the call detail records for the phones of all four youths – Bifolco, Triunfo, Ambrosino and Equabile – to be made available in order to establish who really was on the scooter that night.
The autopsy, performed by the Coroner's Office of Naples Secondo Policlinico hospital, found that the pistol shot was frontal, with the entrance and exit wounds in the chest and back indicating a diagonal trajectory from upper left to lower right.
Davide's family also released photos of the boy's body, in which a wound over the heart can be clearly seen.
In the meantime, on 17th September, the absconder Arturo Equabile was arrested in Casoria. He stated he had no involvement in the incident.
On the evening of the day of the incident, 5th September, spontaneous demonstrations broke out in many places in Naples – sometimes resulting in tensions or clashes with the police – because of the anger and grief caused by the death of Davide Bifolco.
