1978

December 15, Turin
Salvatore Lanza, 21 years old, Public Security Guard
Salvatore Porceddu, 20 years old, Public Security Guard

Salvatore Lanza and Salvatore Porceddu were police officers, locked at dawn in a service van in front of the ‘Le Nuove’ prisons in Turin, at the intersection of Via Pier Carlo Boggio and Corso Vittorio Emanuele II.

A throbbing chronicle of those moments, taken from the Mole24.it website, reconstructs what happened:

“It was early in the morning. Quarter to seven. At the editorial staff of the Gazzetta del Popolo there was already a buzz, an hour earlier there had been a shooting in front of the Nuove prison. He rang the phone. The Red Brigades had struck. A cold voice devoid of accents said, “We are the bierre. We have just carried out an attack on the escort of the New with the logic of annihilation.”

The logic of annihilation, in the jargon of the Red Brigades, was to be understood as an expression synonymous with death.

At 5.40 it was still pitch dark in the city. It was a cold executioner. Two very young police officers were locked inside the Fiat 850 service van, a vehicle available for the night patrol of the avenue in front of the Nuove prisons, at the intersection of Via Pier Carlo Boggio and Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. The minibus was not armored, nothing could against any armed assaults.

A Fiat 128 came out of the course. He approached as fast as a fierce feline hunting. The revolutionary prey was there, inside the police van, in the uniforms of Salvatore Lanza and Salvatore Porceddu, both Salvatore, both islanders, one Sicilian and the other Sardinian, both twenty-one years old. Of the kids.

The 128 did not have a rear window, the brigadiers had taken it away from him preparing that action. In the front seats sat Nadia Ponti and Vincenzo Acella, behind, in the fire station, Raffaele Fiore and Piero Panciarelli were ready with their weapons in hand. All known names of the Turin column of the Br. Perhaps one of the young officers noticed what is about to happen and pulls out the ordinance gun. Moments. The fingers of the terrorists were already on the triggers of the Beretta M12 submachine gun and the twelve-gauge shotgun. The triggers were pressed. Angrily bursts tore the silence of the dawn. A wave of bullets hit the police van, blew up the windows, pierced the bodywork, killed the two officers. The Fiat 128 accelerated violently, far from the attack that had just been carried out. The two Salvatores were stuck in the seats, inside the sheets that were a sieve.”

And that Fiat 128 fled in the direction of via Principi d’Acaia.