Celeste Palmieri didn't make it. The woman, 56 years old, died last night in hospital: in the morning her husband from whom she was separating, Mario Furio, a retired prison police officer, shot her in the parking lot of a supermarket, then got into his car and took his own life with the same gun .
The woman, seriously injured in the head, was hospitalized in desperate conditions and died a few hours later in the intensive care unit of the Foggia hospital where she had been transferred by helicopter. Five children were waiting for her at home.
He was wearing an electronic bracelet, but it wasn't enough . At 11:00 a.m., the device alerted the police to the presence of the man, who was under a restraining order, in the vicinity of the woman. The police immediately notified the woman and diverted a patrol to the scene. She had time to tell them that her device (which is supposed to alert the victim when her stalker gets too close) hadn't rung , but that she had met her husband at the supermarket and seen him leave when she was inside.
Then everything happened in a very short time. As the woman was walking to her car in the supermarket parking lot with her shopping bags, the man approached her and shot her several times, fatally wounding her . Then, as the patrol arrived on the scene, he reached his car and shot himself with the same weapon.
It all happened in front of a huge crowd of people crowding the supermarket. Many people heard the gunshots that caused panic among those present, then the silence and the signs of the tragedy on the asphalt. Celeste Palmieri had reported her husband several times because, those who know the couple say, she was constantly threatened . For this reason he had been subjected to a ban on approaching her with an electronic bracelet. The social services of the municipality had also proposed that she and her children move to a safer location but she had refused, she wanted to stay in her town.
It is understood that the man had been retired since 2017 and it is not known how he obtained the weapon he used .
Dismay on the part of the many witnesses, including supermarket customers and staff. "I didn't understand anything. I heard so many sirens, but only once I was outside did I realize what had happened," says one of the employees. "I didn't know her but you can't die like this. Every day a woman is killed. It's a massacre," says an elderly woman with eyes swollen with tears.
(Online Union)
