6 Italians shot in Germany
DUISBURG, Germany -- Six Italian men died in a hail of gunfire early Wednesday after a pizzeria celebration of one victim's 18th birthday -- a Mafia-style massacre that officials said grew out of a long-running feud between two organized crime clans in southern Italy.
The slayings in this industrial city marked the first time the 'ndrangheta syndicate exported a vendetta, Italian authorities said. The organization, based in Italy's Calabria region, is heavily involved in drug trafficking and extortion and earlier this year officials described it as even more dangerous than the Sicilian Mafia.
The six victims, ranging in age from 16 to 38, had just left the Da Bruno restaurant near the main train station in downtown Duisburg in two vehicles when they came under fire, police said.
A pedestrian reported to police that she heard a bang, followed by a noise she thought was fireworks, just after 2 a.m. About a half hour later, officers found the vehicles, crashed together in a narrow passage between two nondescript office buildings.
A small white Opel van in which two bodies were found had two gunshot holes visible on the passenger side of the windshield, and with two exit holes in the driver's side door and farther back. A black car sat with its windows shattered. Shell casings littered the ground.
"I can't tell you how many shots were fired, but it was a whole lot," said Heinz Sprenger, the head of the investigation.
A witness saw two men fleeing the area, and police were going over surveillance tape from the area.
All six victims suffered head wounds. One was still alive when police arrived, but died as paramedics tended to him, Sprenger said.
In Italy, police in Calabria said the slayings were the latest chapter in a feud that erupted in 1991 after members of one 'ndrangheta clan threw eggs at rivals in another clan during Carnival celebrations.
Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said one of the victims apparently was involved in the original feud. Since the feud broke out 1991, 15 people have been slain, including the latest victims, said Luciano Rindona, police commissioner in the area where the feud began.
The feud, which pits the Nirta-Strangio families against the Pelle-Romeo families, cooled between 2000 and 2006 but erupted again when the wife of one of clan's presumed leaders was murdered last Christmas, Rindona said. An ambush killing Aug. 3 had been the latest slaying before Wednesday's shooting.
Marco Minniti, a deputy Italian interior minister, called the killings "a qualitative leap" in the feud. The spreading of the feud outside Italian territory was unprecedented and worrisome, he added at a news conference.
The Italian news agency ANSA quoted Salvatore Beomi, the Reggio Calabira prosecutor, as saying 'ndrangheta had taken up tactics employed by the Sicilian Mafia -- pursuing their vendettas abroad because their activities are too tightly monitored at home.
German police said none of the victims appeared to have been armed and all were of Calabrian heritage. Three had been living in Duisburg and one in nearby Muelheim, while two were visiting from Italy. All were said to have been involved in running the Da Bruno restaurant.
ANSA identified the victims as Tommaso Venturi, who had just celebrated his 18th birthday with the others: Francesco Pergola, 21, and his younger brother Marco Pergola, 19; Marco Marmo, 25; Sebastiano Strangio, 38; and a 16-year-old.
"I just can't believe it," said Vita Porcelli, a woman of Italian background who works at a shoe store near the shooting scene.
She said she was familiar with several of the victims but knew none of them well. "They were all still so young and had their whole lives before them," she said.
Red and white plastic tape kept people away much of the day from Da Bruno, a well-kept restaurant with an outdoor patio on the ground floor of an office building.
By evening, police opened the area again and someone placed white roses by the restaurant door and a simple sign in German saying: "Why?"