Colleferro, three years without Willy

Three years without Willy Monteiro Duarte. It must have been an evening like many others between 5 and 6 September 2020. One of those evenings in which 21-year-old Willy, an Italian of Cape Verdean origins, had finished working in the restaurant where he was assistant chef, had stopped by to say hello to some friend in the square in Paliano and together with some he had gone to Colleferro. Like every weekend. Willy and his friends took that winding road every weekend to find, a few kilometers away from home, some clubs still open after midnight. But Willy died that night in Colleferro after being punched and kicked for no reason, in an attempt to break up a fight. He wanted to defend another boy. For the barbaric murder of Willy Monteiro Duarte have been brothers Marco and Gabriele Bianchi sentenced to 24 years, who had received life sentences in the first instance. Sentenced to 23 years for Francesco Belleggia and 21 for Mario Pincarelli.

Three years later, Willy’s smile remains etched in the mind. What many of us didn’t see in person but did know in Willy’s photo became a cry against violence in the days immediately following the murder. Those of the torchlight procession along the streets of Paliano, of the signs that read “Never again”. No more violence, no more hate, no more racism. An image that has become a mural in Paliano in Largo Aldo Moro, created by the street artist Ozmo and promoted by Vanity Fair who in those days dedicated the cover to Willy, with the title “Never again”.

«No sentence will give me my son anymore. Do I feel I got justice? I accept the justice that has been done. Forgiveness is another thing. I don’t feel anger, I don’t know if it’s a right or wrong sentence,” Willy’s mother said after the sentence. Present at every hearing, together with Willy’s father, his sister Milena and Willy’s closest friends who have never stopped asking for justice for their friend in recent years. “It’s inexplicable, it’s like feeling something ripped off,” they had told us returning with their minds to the night in which an unprecedented and meaningless violence took Willy away from him forever. The friend who always knew how to say the right word when needed, always with a ready smile. What you felt from afar when he arrived with his Punto Bianca that he loved madly. «He had it all personalized, fortissimo stereo, blue lights», his best friend Franco had said. “If you go into his room, there’s a shelf completely dedicated to car cleaning. When he had the day off, sometimes he even dusted the engine. You knew he was arriving in the square because when he turned on the radio in front of his house he could be heard throughout Paliano. Then you saw him coming down the hill».

In memory of Willy, the Piazza Bianca, the place of the incident, will be inaugurated on 6 September in Colleferro. There where the flowers for Willy have never stopped blooming.