Police blame massacre on mob vendetta

Press, 28 August 1984, Page 6

Police blame massacre on mob vendetta

NZPA-AP Naples Fifteen gunmen leaped from a bus and fired sawnoff shotguns into a crowd outside a church in a Naples suburb yesterday, killing eight people and wounding at least seven in a massacre that the police called a mob vendetta. The Naples police said it was the largest mass killing in the southern city or its suburbs in at least 10 years. They reported that seven people were wounded, but that State-run R.A.I. television said 12 were wounded. The paths were covered with blood after the attack that sent panic through the suburban town of Torre Annunziata, which has been a virtual battleground between rival underworld gangs. It was an ambush, most likely of the Camorra, the Naples Police Chief, Gianfranco Corrias, said in a statement. The Italian news agency Ansa said that later the police arrested eight people in connection with the killings. However, a Naples police official told the Associated Press that he could only confirm that two people had been arrested and nine others detained for questioning. Pasquale Donnarumma, aged 59, and one of the wounded, was among those arrested, according to the police. They identified him as the father-in-law of a Torre Annunziata crime figure.

A Naples police spokesman said the killings were undoubtedly the work of an organised crime gang. He said investigators believed the New Organised Camorra gang might have carried out the attack against suspected members of the rival New Family Camorra group. But the spokesman, who asked not to be identified, said investigators had not ruled out the possibility the killings may have been part of an internal dispute in the New Family. Rivalry among Camorra factions has led to 112 deaths so far this year and 205 deaths in 1983 in the bloody struggle for control of the port city’s lucrative traffic in drugs and contraband cigarettes. The police report on yesterday’s attack said a 50seat, old-fashioned tourist bus had screeched to a halt in front of an apartment once occupied by a man

described as the boss of the New Family. At least 15 gunmen piled out, split into two groups and opened fire with pistols and shotguns outside the nearby church of San Francesco of Paola in the centre of the town. Onlookers said hundreds of people, who were taking walks and chatting in groups, fled screaming when the shooting began. The gunmen sped away in different directions in three cars that were parked nearby, the police said. The police spokesman said three of the gunmen’s targets died instantly and five died soon after in a hospital. Among the wounded was a 10-year-old girl, Monica Errico, who was shot in the right shoulder and will remain in a local hospital for 40 days, the spokesman said. She was in a group of mostly young people entering the church for Mass when the attack began.