ROME: Police have arrested a 22-year-old Italian university student on the run in Germany after allegedly abducting and killing his ex-girlfriend, the man’s lawyer said on Sunday.
Filippo Turetta, a 22-year-old university student from Padua, was found Sunday driving in his car in the vicinity of Leipzig in Germany following a week-long manhunt by Italian authorities, his lawyer Emanuele Compagno said, according to AFP.
Turetta and his ex-girlfriend and fellow student, Giulia Cecchettin, went missing last weekend. On Saturday, her body was found in a gully close to Lake Barcis, nearly 120 kilometers north of Venice, her neck and head covered with stab wounds.
The manhunt was front-page news in Italy over the whole past week — when Giulia had been due to receive her degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Padua — and represented the latest episode of femicide in Italy.
Police got a lead earlier this week after video cameras near her home captured images of Turetta attacking Cecchettin on 11 November before fleeing with her in his car.
The president of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia, said a day of mourning would be observed for the day of Cecchettin’s funeral.
Zaia said that the day of the funeral is right to highlight femicides in the schools while acknowledging that education was “not enough” to eradicate femicide.
Homicides in Italy
In the year to 12 November, there have been 102 homicides with women victims in Italy, 82 of whom were killed by family members or current or former partners, according to the interior ministry.
