Castrovillari, four armed robberies and one attempted: 33-year-old Cassano arrested. 

This press release is issued in compliance with the presumption of innocence of the suspect and pending subsequent procedural developments.

On January 25, 2024, he managed to carry out the first attack against a parapharmacy in Castrovillari and then stopped for about two months when, in the space of just twenty days, it had started to hit the same territory of the Pollino capital again, which has seen reoccurrence in rapid succession of other robbery episodes completely similar to each other: A solitary subject, with his face covered by a balaclava and hood, but above all who, armed with a gun, broke into commercial establishments coinciding with the evening closing time and took possession of the proceeds.

An escalation of robberies that had created particular alarm in the area, immediately perceived by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Castrovillari and by the Carabinieri who, precisely to stem the unfortunate events, promptly activated a coordinated action plan: on the one hand from a preventive point of view with L'use of numerous patrols which scoured the Castrovillarese center and the various commercial activities in the evening hours, making direct contact with owners and employees in order to strengthen the relationship of sincere mutual trust and reliability between the police force and citizens; on the other hand, however, under the direct coordination of Dr. Alessandro D'Alessio, Chief Prosecutor of the Castrovillari Public Prosecutor's Office, the Carabinieri of the Operational Unit carefully analyzed the images acquired by the countless video surveillance systems to reconstruct the various events and identify the author.

It is precisely in this way that, agreeing with the request formulated by the Prosecutor's Office, the GIP of the Court of Castrovillari issued a precautionary custody order in prison against CG, cl. 89, originally from Cassano All'ionio, investigated – considering the current phase of the preliminary investigations by virtue of the elements collected – of four robberies committed and one attempted, all committed at gunpoint in the Castrovillarese area.

Starting from the description provided by the victims of the events, the Carabinieri of the Castrovillari Company first identified the car that the subject used from Cassano All'ionio to reach the commercial activities of Castrovillari. Subsequently, with the precious collaboration of the soldiers of the Cassano All'ionio Company they managed to give a name to the real user of that vehicle.

When suspicions focused on the 33-year-old, the staff of the Castrovillari Operations Unit began to compare the various frames extrapolated from the cameras acquired following the robberies, noting that the subject, with particular somatic features, was wearing the same clothes to commit the robberies.

The turning point then came when the staff of the Castrovillari police station found a balaclava and a toy gun without a red cap in the center: thanks to the information connection, the Carabinieri of the Operational Unit began a difficult task of viewing the images of the cameras in the area, finally arriving at identifying that CG himself, after a robbery attempt gone wrong and probably alarmed by the presence of the Carabinieri patrols, had disposed of everything in his possession and then left aboard the vehicle at high speed returning to Cassano All'Ionio.

A circumstantial framework analytically reconstructed by the Castrovillari Prosecutor's Office which in the request for a precautionary measure summarized in detail the various elements collected by the Carabinieri, all converging towards the 33-year-old from Cassano and which, measured in their overall qualitative value, were evaluated and endorsed by the investigating judge of the Court.

With this in mind, the military carried out the precautionary custody order issued by arresting the subject – to be considered innocent until a final sentence – who, at the end of the formalities, was taken to the local prison.

Approximately three weeks after the last event, with the joint work carried out by the Castrovillari Prosecutor's Office and the Carabinieri, moved by the usual sensitivity towards the territory, but above all with the invaluable collaboration provided by the victims of the events who offered a clear description and complete with the characteristics of the subject, the phenomenon of robberies has been definitively stemmed.