Associated Press Archive

May 2, 2003

A disgruntled town worker opened fire with a handgun in a town hall in eastern Sicily on Friday, killing five people and injuring one before committing suicide, police said.

The suspect fled the scene of the attack in the town of Aci Castello, just outside Catania, prompting a manhunt through eastern Sicily. Police in the southeastern city of Ragusa said Friday night that the suspect had killed himself in a church near the town of Vittoria, 60 miles southwest of Catania.

The Salt Lake Tribune

May 3, 2003

Aci Castello, Sicily -- A man opened fire with a handgun in a town hall in eastern Sicily on Friday, killing five people, police said. Police in the town of Aci Castello were searching for the gunman. With the assailant still at large, some churches in the town were closed. Police were patrolling schools as students were finishing class for the day. The victims included the Aci Castello mayor, police said, along with another town official and two women.

Associated Press Archive

May 4, 2003

Sicilian council worker kills five

May 3, 2003

A Sicilian council worker worried about his job prospects shot dead the mayor of Aci Castello and four other people in a killing spree that initially raised the spectre of mafia or politically inspired violence.

The man, who had been employed by the council on a short-term contract as part of a social programme to reduce unemployment, stormed into the office of the mayor, Michele Toscano, shooting him repeatedly in the chest and head with a pistol.

He also killed two female workers in another municipal office, a man who happened to pass him on the stairs and a pensioner on a park bench.

Local officials said the suspect, 32-year-old Giuseppe Leotta, had a history of mental problems and bore a grudge against the mayor because his application to become his driver had been turned down.

Mr Leotta had worked as a custodian of the Norman castle that gives Aci Castello its name and had also looked after children at a primary school.

The shooting caused panic in the quiet seaside town in eastern Sicily and police advised other council employees to lock themselves in their homes while the gunman was on the loose. A manhunt was launched with police helicopters, and roads outside the town were blocked.

Shotguns legally held for sporting purposes and a large quantity of ammunition were found at Mr Leotta's home, where he had lived with his parents until recently.

Neighbours described Mr Leotta as "a strange loner", and said he had once attacked his brother with an axe, but the episode had not been reported to police. Locals said the town, surrounded by olive and orange groves, and shadowed by Mount Etna had never seen such violence before.

"I'm speechless. The election campaign has been stained with blood," said Raffaele Lombardo, a local representative of the centrist Christian Democrat Union. Sicily is preparing for local elections this month.

Mr Toscano had been mayor for just under a year. A respected local doctor, he was a member of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party.

"What I saw was a real massacre, a terrible sight," said Father Vittorio Rocca, the parish priest, who was one of the first people to arrive on the scene.

"The mayor was lying in his office in a pool of blood. The killer had shot him several times, aiming at the face and heart," Fr Rocca told the ADN-Kronos news agency.

The priest said Mr Leotta had been employed by a cooperative which worked for the council, but his contract had not been renewed.

Unemployment is a sensitive issue in southern Italy, where the jobless rate is 19%, compared with a national average of 9%. In some areas it approaches 30%.

Italians are due to vote next month in a referendum on a new law to increase the flexibility of the job market by reducing legal protections against arbitrary dismissal.

Mayor and four others killed by gunman at Sicilian town hall

By Peter Popham - The Independent

Saturday, 3 May 2003

The Mayor of Aci Castello, a town near Catania in Sicily, and four other people were shot dead yesterday morning by a man who walked into the town hall and opened fire with a pistol.

The Mayor, Michele Toscano, a gynaecologist by profession and a member of President Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, was meeting a delegation of social workers when the man, named by police as Giuseppe Leotta, 32, asked to speak to him. When told that Mr Toscano was busy, Leotta, a casual labourer, went away but returned with a pistol. He burst into the Mayor's office and shot him dead. He killed three other people in the building, two men and a woman, and a man in his sixties who was sitting on a bench outside.

Giovanni Carioli, a senior town official, said: "It's a crazy thing. I've never seen anything like it ... We are undoubtedly dealing with a psychopath."

A former mayor of the town, Paolo Castorina, told reporters that Leotta had worked casually for the municipality for more than 10 years. "For a period he worked in the town kindergarten," he said. "One day he asked me to help him change his job because he had problems with his colleagues. I told him to be patient. He wasn't aggressive, but he certainly did not strike me as someone who was completely normal."

Another source claimed Leotta had tried several times to be hired as the Mayor's driver.

Police said that after killing five people, wounding another one and threatening two more, Leotta barricaded himself inside his home.

The parish priest, Don Vittorio Rocca, has gone on Radio Vatican to ask to Leotta to surrender. "Don't kill anybody else, not even yourself," he said.