An Italian man has been arrested after a Nigerian street vendor was beaten to death on a busy shopping street.
The Nigerian man Alika Ogorchukwu was beaten and killed in the Adriatic coastal city of Civitanova Marche while onlookers filmed the incident without any apparent attempt to intervene, local media reported.
Mayor of Civitanova, Tommaso Claudio Corvatta blasted what he said was a “climate of intolerance” that “has been raging in the city for some time now.”
A viral footage circulated on social media has drawn widespread criticism of the attack, this is even as Italy enters a parliamentary campaign in which the right-wing coalition has already made immigration an issue.
Far-right leaders Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni, who have been outspoken against immigration, also denounced the killing and hoped that “the sentence will be the maximum possible” for the murderer.
Local news agency ANSA, reported that police used street cameras to track the Italian identified as Filippo Ferlazzo and promptly arrested him on Saturday on charges of murder and allegedly stealing the victim’s cellphone.
Alika’s wife, Charity Oriachi in an interview with local media said “All I want is justice. Justice for my husband”.
Ferlazzo is currently being held in the Montacuto prison in Ancona.
According to Daniel Amanza, who runs the ACSIM association for immigrants in the Marche region’s Macerata province, Alika, who was married with two children aged 8 and 10, resorted to selling goods on the street after being hit by a car and losing his job as a laborer due to his injuries.
