1977
April 21, Rome
Settimio Passamonti, 22 years old, a non-commissioned officer of Public Security

It’s April 21, 1977. In the morning, after a long assembly, four faculties of Sapienza are occupied by students in mobilization. The rector, Antonio Ruberti, calls for the intervention of the police, who immediately clear the premises, without there being any incidents. But, shortly after, the clash explodes outside the university.
Young people from the Autonomia Operaia assault a bus. They use it to create a kind of barricade. The celere charge with her head down. The smoke of tear gas fills the streets. Molotov fly. Then, in the general confusion, they hear shots echoing. Septimio Passamonti, a non-commissioned unofficial pil, reached by two bullets, collapses to the ground. Under his fleshless body a smech of blood widens.
Tall, sturdy, with that dark mustache he wears, he looks bigger than his age. But Septimius is 23 years old. He is almost the age of the students who took to the streets to demonstrate. He comes from a small town in the province of Teramo, Mosciano Sant’Angelo. The last of seven children, he enlisted to escape misery, to try to help the family and be able to build a future for himself. A girlfriend is waiting for him at home. They plan to get married in December, as soon as Septimius has finished the course and obtained the ranks of deputy brigadier. But the dream is shattered by those two gunshots.
Colleagues help him, trying to save his life. But there will be nothing to do. Hours later, at the point where Septimius fell, an anonymous hand traces an infamous writing: “Here was a carramba, comrade Lorusso is avenged.”
He refers to the student Francesco Lo Russo, a militant of Lotta Continua, who died a month earlier during clashes in Bologna. ‘The time of the children of the southern peasants killed by the children of the Roman bourgeoisie must end,’ will declare the Minister of the Interior, Francesco Cossiga, announcing the government’s willingness to ban all demonstrations in Lazio for a month.