A fun evening in the heart of Palermo's nightlife turned into a nightmare for Valentina Peonio, a 33-year-old woman wounded by a shotgun blast during the night between Saturday and Sunday. After spending the evening at a nightclub on Via Quintino Sella, she was returning to her car. Suddenly, a shotgun blast loaded with pellets was fired from a Smart car parked in Piazza Nascè, in the heart of the city, striking the victim in the back, just below the base of the neck. The 33-year-old, who was with a friend, was later questioned by investigators and immediately transported to the Trauma Center at Villa Sofia Hospital, where doctors extracted approximately thirty pellets. Despite Valentina's serious medical condition and several rib fractures, her life is not in danger because the bullets did not damage any vital organs or blood vessels beyond repair. Outside the hospital, the woman's relatives waited all day waiting for news.
"The police asked me if my daughter had had problems with her boyfriend. I replied that she's happily single," the mother recounts. The woman managed to exchange a few words with her daughter. "She apologized for making us worry," she says. "Sorry for what? For having fun with her friends? Our world fell apart. It was terrible to receive a phone call from our son in the middle of the night." The reconstruction of yet another incident of violence in Palermo is now being entrusted to the police of the Flying Squad, who are meticulously analyzing images from surveillance cameras in the area. From the initial investigations, a hypothesis emerges that makes the incident, if possible, even more disturbing: the shot may have been fired accidentally. The footage appears to show a boy and a girl inside a Smart car, fiddling with a rifle. Valentina Peonio therefore wasn't a deliberate target, but rather found herself "in the wrong place at the wrong time." After the shot was fired from a distance of about ten meters, the car quickly fled the scene. Some witnesses reported that the car, in the frantic rush of the escape, struck two people, but at the time no passersby showed up at the hospital for medical treatment.
Piazza Nascè is located in a key part of the city, halfway between the popular Borgo Vecchio neighborhood and the city's nightlife district. The area is no stranger to violence: just a few meters away, in December 2023, the young Lino Celesia was killed outside a nightclub. In that case, the murder was the result of a fight. Law enforcement is now searching for the owner of the Smart to clarify the exact circumstances of a night that could have had a far more tragic outcome.
(Unioneonline)
