The crime
She would have turned 16 in a month, she was ripped from life by the killing spree. And no one in the community of Monteveglio still manages to give peace to the absurd death of Chiara Gualzetti, whose body was found yesterday afternoon near the local abbey with several cuts at the height of the gorge. The main suspect is a 16-year-old friend of the young woman, who confessed to the murder, however, leaving many question marks on the story.
The day after the terrible discovery in Monteveglio, silence reigns, the same one perceived three years ago after the death of another teenager, Giuseppe Balboni. Many businesses have chosen to remain closed, hardly anyone goes through the streets. Only in front of Chiara’s parents’ house there is a bustle of people: Vincenzo and Giusi welcome guests, but they still don’t feel like talking to journalists. Next to them the uncles, immediately rushed from Campania (of which the victim’s relatives are from) after the tragedy; in the garden also the little dog that Chiara, in the company of her best friend, often took for a walk in the streets of Monteveglio. In the village for tomorrow the city mourning has been proclaimed, while a first return to community life will arrive in the evening, with the torchlight procession in homage to the fellow citizen in which the entire community of Valsamoggia will probably participate, as announced by the mayor Daniele Ruscigno, promoter of the event.
And it was in Valsamoggia that the young woman, who had recently finished the second year of the hotel institute, was studying. Among his passions, as you can read on the Instagram profile (the Facebook one has already been deactivated), music and archery. The latter was not only a passion, but he practiced it at a competitive level with the company of the Pomegranate Archers, also entrenched in pain. But on social of Chiara, where she loved to withdraw in the company of the dog or accompanying the selfie of short musical contents, there are not only happy experiences, but also other darker ones: there is the emotion for the recent death of his cat Red, honored with a very long post on Instagram; then there are other elements that can perhaps shed more light on his death, such as the photo in which the girl in January 2020 posted the screenshot of threats and insults received in the chat private. An episode, however, quite distant in time, linked more to a case of cyberbullying than to the figure of the young man with whom Chiara spent the last hours of her life.
Little is known about him: he had been dating the girl for a few weeks and they often wrote about social, but Chiara’s parents didn’t like the idea of the two going out together. The fact that the last conversations with the girl have been canceled and that the confession has been repeatedly retracted cast more than a shadow on the innocence of the young man, who had been followed for some time by a psychologist. The Juvenile Court of Bologna is evaluating the possibility of carrying out a psychiatric assessment on him.
The few people who stroll through the streets of Monteveglio or who sip a coffee in the bars in the square speak of nothing else. “It is difficult to find words to express what happened – comments Luigi, a 71-year-old retiree – I hope for an exemplary sentence for the culprit, whoever he is”. Few believe in the hypothesis of Chiara’s suicide, re-launched by some media outlets on the basis of one of the versions provided by the boy. “For me it is unlikely”, stresses Elisa, 45, walking with the dog near the Gualzetti house, “we have seen too many femicides.” And near the Gualzetti house around 4 pm some of Chiara’s friends also arrive, visibly shaken but still trying to release the tension by playing ping pong or cycling. “I’ve known her for five years, I’m speechless,” one of them comments.
