Acca Larentia killings

The Acca Larentia killings refers to three deaths that occurred in Rome the evening of January 7, 1978, in which three young activists of the Youth Front of the Italian Social Movement were killed. Two of them had just left the headquarters of the ISM, located on a street known as Acca Larentia in the popular district of Tuscolano, and were busy distributing leaflets to advertise an upcoming concert by Amici del Vento. The third was killed few hours later, during the anti-police riots organized at the site of the killings.

Just out from headquarters, five young MSI activists were fired upon from a group of five or six assailants armed with automatic weapons. One of the youngsters, Franco Bigonzetti, a twenty-year-old medical student, was hit and killed on impact; Vincenzo Segneri, although wounded in one arm, was able to return to the party headquarters - equipped with an armored door - along with two others: Maurizio Lupini and Giuseppe D'Audino, both unharmed. The last of the group, Francesco Ciavatta, an eighteen-year-old student, was wounded though attempted an escape through the stairs located on the side of the party building but, chased by the unknown attackers, was shot once more in the back and left for dead. He died in the ambulance during transport to the hospital.

The news quickly spread in the hours following the attack and an astonished crowd, composed mainly of Roman ISM activists, gathered on the site of the attack which was cordoned off by the Carabinieri. For reasons and circumstances still unclear, riots erupted and required the intervention of police armed with tear gas. The equipment of the RAI journalists on scene were damaged, and the then national secretary of the youth front, Gianfranco Fini, was slightly wounded by a tear gas canister fired by police in the heat of the protest of young and old Roman activists.

In the ensuing chaos, a Carabinieri Captain Edoardo Sivori shot at eye level Stefano Recchioni, a nineteen-year-old political activist and musician, to which the singer-songwriter Fabrizio Marzi dedicated the song "Giovinezza" ("Youth") in 1979. The young man died after two days of hospitalization.

Three months after the killings and loss of his son, the father of Francesco Ciavatta, committed suicide by drinking a bottle of Hydrochloric acid.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed a few days afterward through an audio tape discovered next to a petrol station, in which a garbled young voice said the following on behalf of the Nuclei Armati di Contropotere Territoriale (Armed Groups of Territorial Counterpower):

...
Wikipedia