The murder of an African street vendor in Italy sparked political wrangling ahead of the national elections next September, and caused a new debate about racism in the European country, according to the newspaper.The New York Times“.
On Friday, Nigerian immigrant Lika Ogorchokwu was beaten to death by an Italian with a cane in a main shopping street in Civitanova Marche, a seaside town on the Adriatic coast as shown in a video of the assault circulated thousands of times on social media.
Eyewitnesses remained spectators of the incident without anyone interfering, although the attack continued for four minutes, according to the American newspaper.
This is how a NIGERIAN resident in Italy was hacked to death a day b4 yesterday…WHERE is our ambassador to ITALY,WHAT is he doing?we haven’t see his face on ITALIAN television….The victim’s name is ALIKA OGORCHUKWU pic.twitter.com/ZnqAzTgT6v
— AKPOKA ODIANOSEN DESMOND (@AKPOKADESMOND) July 31, 2022
“Let’s condemn the fact itself and the behavior of the people who stood by and watched and photographed a disabled person being killed with a crutch,” said Patrick Gobadia, deputy secretary of an association representing Nigerians in Italy. “It’s a shame,” he added.
A decade ago, Ogorchoco moved to Italy to join his wife, Charti Urachi, in the town of San Severino Marche, an hour’s drive from the coast.
“Now that she is alone and has a son, you can imagine how difficult it is,” said Francesco Mantella, a lawyer who has helped the family and has represented Urashi for eight years.
Ogurchoko, 39, resorted to selling goods after he was hit by a car last year while riding his bike, an accident that forced him to use crutches to move around.
Speaking to the Italian channel “Sky News”, wife Urashi was stunned. “The pain is too much for me, I need justice,” she said.
Ferlazzo, a 32-year-old factory worker, was charged with the crime and is now being held on charges of murder and robbery; Because he took Ogurchoko’s mobile phone after the accident.
Matteo Luconi, Macerata’s chief police investigator overseeing the case, said in a phone interview that an autopsy later this week would determine the cause of death.
He added that the investigations did not show anything indicating racist motives for the crime. A police statement said the “motive for the murder” could be “trivial reasons”.
The murder struck a chord because the Marches region, where Civitanova is located, was the scene of heinous crimes against immigrants. In February 2018, a right-wing Italian shot and wounded six African migrants in Macerata, about 27 kilometers from Civitanova Marche, making the city a hotbed of intolerance.
Two years earlier, a Nigerian man was murdered in Fermo, south of Civitanova, after trying to defend his wife from racial slurs.