Femicide in Florence: Lorena Isceri called 112 from the car boot, then thrown from the overpass
Lorena Isceri telephoned 112 for twenty minutes from the boot of her ex-partner's car, Federico Vella, before being killed on the A1 motorway overpass.
Twenty minutes on the phone with police, then silence
Lorena Isceri called the emergency number 112 while locked in the boot of her former partner's car, with her hands and feet bound. It is reported by Il Fatto Quotidiano – Cronaca, which reconstructs the minutes preceding the femicide that occurred last Thursday, shortly after 2 p.m., near the A1 motorway overpass.
The call lasted twenty minutes. On the other end of the line, officers listened to every word and every sound in an attempt to locate the vehicle, without intervening verbally so as not to betray the presence of the call. Lorena's voice was frightened but lucid: she provided the name of her attacker, his age and even the address of his home in the Galluzzo area of Florence.
"He attacked me in the garage, he kidnapped me"
"He attacked me in the garage, he beat me and he kidnapped me," Lorena told the operators. "It was my boyfriend, his name is Federico, he is 36 years old. I have been in the car for ten minutes. I do not know where we are going. I think he wants to take me to his house." Lorena had woken up in the boot after the attack, wounded and in darkness. She had managed to find her phone in the rucksack that Federico Vella had thrown into the car along with her. The signal, however, kept cutting in and out along the motorway route.
At a certain point the car stopped and the boot was opened. At that moment Lorena changed strategy: instead of accusing the man or asking to be released, she tried to calm him down and buy time. "Federico, but what are you doing? I love you, do not worry, let us get back together." The last words she spoke to her attacker were a desperate move to keep him at bay whilst waiting for help to arrive, not a genuine desire for reconciliation. Vella closed the boot again and set off. Forty minutes after Lorena's call, he too died by throwing himself from the same bridge.
The recorded conversation, now at the centre of the investigation
That conversation remained recorded and is today one of the central elements of the investigation being conducted by the Florence Public Prosecutor's Office. Investigators are seeking to establish with precision the sequence of events in the minutes following the first stop and the time interval that elapsed before arriving at the viaduct.
Weeks of insistent messages after the breakup
To understand how the attack came about, it is necessary to go back to the weeks preceding it. Lorena had decided to end the relationship last August after discovering multiple infidelities. The breakup, however, had not put an end to contact: according to what was reported by family members and friends, Vella had continued to bombard the woman with increasingly insistent messages and telephone calls. His possessive behaviour and his jealousy had already emerged during the relationship. Those who knew the couple recount episodes in which the man reacted with aggression when other men approached Lorena.
Lorena's father had advised her on several occasions to file a report. A friend had also insisted on this. Lorena continued, however, to hope that the situation could be resolved without having to resort to the authorities, whilst meanwhile having consulted a lawyer. The night before the femicide she had had a long telephone call with her father, concluded, according to his account, with yet another invitation to file a report. A few hours later, the attack would come.
Source: Il Fatto Quotidiano - Cronaca