1982
January 21, Monteroni d’Arbia (SI)
Giuseppe Savastano, 20 years old, auxiliary carabiniere
Euro Tarsilli, 19 years old, auxiliary carabiniere
On January 21, 1982, around 10 AM, a commando from the Organized Communists for Proletarian Liberation (ndr) consisting of seven men robbed a branch of Monte dei Paschi in a residential neighborhood of Siena. Employing an unusual escape tactic, they boarded the Siena-Montalcino bus to return to what would later be discovered as a “logistical” hideout in Buonconvento. However, not everything went smoothly: checkpoints were set up to search for the criminals, and around 11:30 AM, on the Cassia state road in the municipality of Monteroni d’Arbia, Chief Marshal Augusto Barna, commander of the Murlo station, and Carabinieri Euro Tarsilli and Giuseppe Savastano from the Monteroni d’Arbia station, stopped the bus to check the passengers.
During the operation, the marshal, suspicious of the behavior and responses of a young man and woman, invited them to follow him for further questioning. As the non-commissioned officer led the two towards the service vehicle, another young man followed them, holding a pistol hidden behind his back. After getting off the bus, he started shooting, and the two carabinieri were killed, while Marshal Barna, who was leading the patrol, despite being seriously injured, managed to return fire, mortally wounding the terrorist Lucio Di Giacomo and injuring a second, who fled along with the other five. Within a week, all of them were captured (ndr: Daniele Sacco Lanzoni, Giulia Borelli, Loredana Biancamano, Gianfranco Fornoni, Guglielmo Prato, and Maria Sciarra). In the following September, the Court of Assizes of Siena sentenced them to prison terms ranging from life imprisonment to twenty years. The sentence was confirmed in the Florence appeal a few months later. Auxiliary Carabinieri Savastano and Tarsilli were posthumously awarded the “Military Valor Cross,” and Marshal Barna was awarded the “Silver Medal for Military Valor.”