Rome police on Friday detained two suspects in relation to the homicide of Luca Sacchi, a 24-year-old personal trainer who was shot in the head in a street in the capital two nights ago, sources said. The attack took place late on Wednesday and Sacchi died of his injuries in hospital on Thursday.
The suspects are both 21-year-old Romans, the sources said. They were detained after the mother of one of the suspects told police on Thursday she feared her son was involved, sources said. The man who allegedly shot Sacchi does not have a criminal record while the person who was with him has been convicted in the past of drugs offences, the sources said. According to an initial reconstruction of events, Sacchi was killed during a robbery that ensued following a drug deal that went wrong. The suspects are thought to have offered to obtain drugs after noticing that Sacchi's girlfriend had money in her backpack.
But they came back with guns and allegedly tried to rob the woman, at which point Sacchi tried to defend her and one of the suspects shot him.
But the girlfriend, Anastasia Kylemnyk, told RAI TV that "drugs didn't come into it".
"Drugs? They didn't come into it. Luca was there to look after his little brother who was in the pub," she told TG1, the news programme of the first channel of the Italian state broadcaster. "Luca never met the pushers...Luca protected me as he always did, he put the man on the ground and perhaps because of that they got scared," she said.
But Italian police chief Franco Gabrielli said that when investigators release their account of what happened it will show that "it was not a tale of two poor young people who had their bag snatched".
He did not elaborate. Gabrelli also said Rome had problems but was "not Gotham City".
He also said that security should not be the subject of political finger pointing after a spat between far-right opposition League leader Matteo Salvini and Premier Giuseppe Conte Thursday.
Former interior minister Salvini, head of the anti-migrant Eurskeptic League, said the government had made "disastrous" cuts to police funding.
Conte called Salvini "pathetic" for allegedly exploiting a murder to try to score political points.
Conte denied there had been police funding cuts.
"Yesterday we approved the extra resources for overtime for the police in 2018, and just guess who should have done that and didn't," he said.
Manuel Bortuzzo, a promising swimmer paralysed from the waist down in a Rome shooting earlier this year, tweeted: ""In my case life was a bastard, with you it had no pity".
Rome is becoming increasingly drug-ridden, sources said Friday.
Seven tonnes of narcotics are used in the Italian capital each year, a business worth some 50 million euros.
Drug pushing areas include San Basilio, San Lorenzo and even the touristy Trastevere district.
Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi said "Rome is not the Wild West and Roman citizens are not bandits".
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