Femicide, two women killed in a single day

Two women killed, in a single day, by the men they married. The last one was killed yesterday afternoon in Fagnano Castello, in the province of Cosenza. Sonia Lattari was 43 years old and was shot to death with a kitchen knife by her husband Giuseppe Servidio at the end of a quarrel, in the apartment where the couple lived. It seems that the two had been at loggerheads for some time.

A few hours earlier he lost his life Giuseppina Di Luca, 46 years old, mother of two daughters. She was killed by her ex-husband, Paolo Vecchia, in Agnosine, in Valsabbia, in the Brescia area.

It was there that the woman had lived since she separated from the man a month ago. Giuseppina Di Luca was hit with about ten stab wounds by her former spouse, who later constituted himself in the police station. “A normal family, two hard workers”: this is how the mayor of Agnosine, Giorgio Bontempi, describes them. “You can’t really understand what clicked in the man’s mind.”

Sonia Lattari and Giuseppina Di Luca are the fifth and sixth victims of femicide since the beginning of the month. Eight women have been killed in the past seven days, 77 since January 1st: this year there is, on average, one victim every three days. Almost all of them were killed in the family, especially at the hands of the partner or the ex, according to the latest report of the Criminal analysis service, of the Central Directorate of the Criminal Police.

A terrible escalation, even if the statistics show an 8% drop in femicides compared to the same period in 2020, when 83 murders of women had already been recorded. While during the year of the pandemic the number of murders reached an all-time low, violence against women soared: in 2020, calls to 1522, the number of public utilities against violence and stalking, had increased by 79.5% compared to the previous year, both by phone and via chat (+ 71%), with a boom from the end of March 2020, when the lockdown began.