"Highly persecutory conduct." This is how prosecutor Maria Paola Asara, in court yesterday in Sassari, described the behavior a 50-year-old man from Codrongianos allegedly committed between 2021 and 2023 against a 22-year-old woman from the surrounding area.
The man is also charged with aggravated assault, caused, according to the indictment, by a car chase that ended in a rear-end collision and a sprain for the young woman, reported with an eight-day prognosis.
A romantic relationship had developed between the two, despite their 27-year age difference, which quickly became complicated, giving rise, as the deputy prosecutor recounted, to a scenario of threats, insults, and jealous outbursts. The man allegedly also engaged in these acts in public, including serious insults toward the woman, uttered in bars in her hometown.
The defendant also allegedly threatened, speaking to the then-19-year-old's mother, that if she didn't change her attitude toward him, he "would be forced to speak to her father to tell him everything." That is, about the relationship, of which the man was unaware, and which could have affected his health, already compromised by his awaiting a transplant.
In the chronological sequence of the alleged harassment, the 50-year-old allegedly first pursued his partner in 2022 with his car , endangering her and attempting to rear-end her. Then came the alleged insults he directed at her in front of university colleagues, revealing intimate details, also in 2022.
Again, a chase in 2023, during which the defendant allegedly told her: "I'll burn you alive! I'll kill you!" Another victim of this behavior was also a friend of the injured party, who was allegedly chased.
Furthermore, the 50-year-old allegedly approached the same woman on social media, using a fake profile, to obtain information about his ex. When caught, he allegedly threatened to "break her bones," and repeated the same sentiment to a cousin of the woman, claiming, "I want to kill her! I want to blow up her car with her inside."
All of this, the magistrate emphasizes, had "psychiatric implications" and the alleged victim is still experiencing the after-effects of the stalking the man is accused of.
However, before yesterday's hearing, the man denied all the accusations in his spontaneous statements , claiming that he was the one being stalked by the girl, who would constantly contact him, even early in the morning, on his cell phone and elsewhere, forcing him to change devices. "I told her parents I wanted her to stay away," he stated.
The prosecutor found his words unreliable and requested a three-year prison sentence, without granting mitigating circumstances.
Judge Valentina Nuvoli adjourned the trial until September for the civil plaintiff, represented by lawyer Rossella Pinna, and the 50-year-old's defense, represented by lawyers Gianni Falchi and Giuseppe Murineddu.