ROME -- Italian opposition politicians from populist parties and other conservative forces on Sunday demanded a new law on legitimate defense to protect law-abiding residents.
The debate began after a restaurant owner was put under investigation in the fatal shooting of a thief in the back during a middle-of-the-night break-in at the eatery.
The owner, Mario Cattaneo, 67, and his family live above the restaurant in Gugnano, near Lodi in northern Italy.
When noise awakened the family early Friday, the restaurateur grabbed a loaded hunting rifle and, according to some accounts given by the man and his adult son, fired toward a courtyard through a rear-entrance barricade erected by the thieves. In other Italian media accounts, the owner was quoted as saying the rifle fired accidentally when the thieves yanked its barrel and he fell. In still another version, the Italian news agency ANSA reported that Cattaneo said on Sunday that one of the thieves grabbed his arm and tried to pull away the rifle.
Cattaneo showed journalists bruises on his arm that he said were caused by a thief.
The victim, a Romanian man, was fatally shot near a shoulder blade. The other thieves fled, leaving behind cigarette cartons allegedly stolen from the trattoria's bar area.
"I'm deeply sorry for what happened. I thought the criminals had already gone away," the Italian news agency reported the owner as saying on Sunday.
Opposition politicians championed the restaurateur's cause.
"I'm on Mario's side," Mariastella Gelmini, a leader in former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's conservative-leaning Forza Italia Party, wrote on Facebook.
Gelmini challenged the ruling Democratic Party to speed up the timetable on a bill in Parliament aimed at clarifying what constitutes legitimate defense of people and property.
"A dead man is never good news, but the Italian citizens stand by Mario Cattaneo," Matteo Salvini, who leads the anti-immigrant Northern League, tweeted Sunday. "No judge can convict him."
The owner's son, Gianluca Cattaneo, said: "We've reopened, because one needs to start over, go forward, but our morale is very low.
"We wanted to reopen today thanks to the strength of our customers and to say thanks."
Giorgia Meloni, who heads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, said that if the right-wing-backed legitimate defense bill had become law already, "Mario Cattaneo wouldn't have to face a trial."
"The principle that we want to ratify is clear: if, in the best of hypotheses you come into my property during the night to rob, I have the right to defend myself," Meloni wrote on Facebook.
A Section on 03/13/2017