Suicide gunman kills seven as domestic violence shocks Italy

IN the latest killings involving families or children to shock Italy, a man went on a rampage yesterday, shooting dead seven people with three guns before killing himself.

It was the third episode of domestic violence in Italy in less than 24 hours, leaving a total of 12 dead and two critically injured.

The morning killing spree took place in the tranquil, well-to-do community of Chieri, in hill country outside the north-eastern industrial city of Turin.

Police said the man, identified as Mauro Antonello, 40, used several weapons to shoot his wife, from whom he was separated, her mother, his brother-in-law and his wife, and three neighbours.

Antonello, a gun collector, then killed himself. Initial reports said he was a security guard but he was identified as a building company employee.

The weapons included a revolver, a semi-automatic pistol and a sub-machine gun. Antonello had permits for all of them.

Yesterday's violence was the latest to take place in the type of small community of neat brick houses and trimmed gardens where families move to escape urban crime.

Neighbours said the shooting began about 8.45am and within 10 minutes eight people were on the ground. The body of one victim, apparently a woman, was lying in a rear garden more than four hours later.

"I saw the man run between the two houses. He was bent close to the ground holding the guns," neighbour Giovanni Griva said.

The couple's seven-year-old daughter had just left for school and other members of the two families had gone to work.

Less than 24 hours earlier, near Reggio Emilia in central Italy, a retired policeman killed his wife and his daughter, injured his daughter's boyfriend and shot himself.

Renzo Finamore, whose hobby was making video films, recorded the entire sequence, leaving police with the grim evidence. Finamore and his daughter's fiance were in critical condition.

At almost the same time as yesterday's killings near Turin, police found the body of Antonio Schiliro, 51, and his 49-year-old wife in an apartment on Rome's southern outskirts.

They said Schiliro killed his wife and then himself with a knife, apparently after an argument over a son by a previous relationship.

In the past week, Italians have been gripped by the story of Desiree, a 14-year-old girl from a small northern town who was assaulted and killed in an abandoned farm house, allegedly by three classmates and a 36-year-old man.