Vittorio Cingano, the old man beaten in Vicenza. “Saving that girl was a moral obligation”

Vittorio Cingano is 73 years old and is an engineer born in Mestre but who spent his life in Vicenza. “A good man,” describes his daughter Silvia, “who grew up with postwar values, someone who takes off his hat to greet you when he meets you on the street.” It is the old man who appears – while receiving punches and kicks in the face – in the shocking video filmed on Monday in front of the fruit and vegetable market of the Berric capital. The attacker’s name is Akar Alberto Fontanarosa, he is a 25-year-old Italian of Hungarian origin, a drug addict. The Volanti of the Vicenza police station arrested him for injuries aggravated by futile motives, cruelty and poor defense: the images show him enraged against a man three times his age, enraged while on the ground. Against his girlfriend who was with him, Carolina, 31, the commissioner issued a “warning”: If you get into trouble again, you risk being arrested. “But Alberto did nothing,” the woman continued denying. And to think that the old man had intervened to defend her. “It was happening, I saw that guy who was attacking a girl. He slapped her, shook her hand around her neck, criticized her… ”, he says, speaking on the phone from the bed of the San Bortolo hospital where he is admitted. The forecast is 45 days.

How are you now? «I have some blows to the head but luckily the Tac is negative. Unfortunately, through kicks, that man broke my femur and the rehabilitation will be a bit long. I just came out of the operating room: they had to put three screws in my left leg ».

When he saw that he was hitting his girlfriend, what did he do? «It must have been 5 in the afternoon, he was walking when he heard the shouts of those two arguing and I saw him putting his hands on him. I approached him, I said: what are you doing? And that did not open his mouth, he approached me and … ass! He knocked me out with his fist. Then came the kicks and everything you see in the video. Fortunately, the police are exceptional and within minutes they arrested him. Now I wait for a severe sentence to come, which will serve as a warning.

They say you’re a hero: at 73 you were the only one who had the courage to get in the way. “I would do it again: if a woman is beaten, I have a moral obligation to defend her. We are becoming a selfish society, I know. But I hope to continue making the right decisions, without pretending not to see.

So would you do it again? “Of course. But now I would be more cautious. That young man took me by surprise: if I came back I would give him, first of all, a good punch.”

Do you know that the woman now defends her boyfriend?“Crazy things. Also because there are witnesses and the video is unequivocal …».

Lega, Fratelli d’Italia, center-left: politics speaks of you as a brave man and asks for exemplary penalties. Did you expect it?“I have read that an uproar is being created around what happened to me. Everything here seems a bit absurd. I repeat: what I have done, defending someone who is in difficulties, should be normal. Even for politicians.