FLORENCE. “We didn’t make it. By a few seconds, just a few seconds”. They arrived at the station in tears. She appeared between a piece of sky and concrete, they saw her fall while they were climbing onto the overpass. The Polstrada car speeding on the Panoramica, the Lora viaduct ahead, the silhouette of Federico Vella near the toll barrier and then Lorena Isceri disappearing beyond the parapet, down among the pillars and the ground beneath the A1. A moment. The one that was missing to save her.
The officers slam on the brakes, fling open the doors and run towards him. Police officers, men who witnessed yet another scene of a man killing a woman because he is too weak to bear himself. Federico is still there. He has just destroyed everything by throwing Lorena into the void.
The kidnapping and the suicide
He had dragged her out of the trunk after waiting for her in the garage at home in Rifredi, beaten her, stunned her, tied her with cable ties and taken her to Barberino. Now he stays next to the barrier, watches the officers approach and starts shouting. “She attacked me. It was her.” Disjointed phrases, say the investigators. The bodycams record him. They talk to him, try to hold him still, to gain ground. But on the viaduct everything is now measured in steps and seconds. Federico takes one on the other side. “Some fits are so perfect that, even if you separate them, the shape of the other stays on you forever,” he had written in the caption of the last reel. When the firefighters go down under the bridge they will first find his body and a little further on Lorena’s. To understand how they got there you have to rewind everything, go back less than two hours and return to Florence, to a garage on via Panciatichi, where Federico had waited for her.
What happened
It is early afternoon. Lorena returns. Vella is in the building’s garage. He surprises her, attacks her, hits her until she is stunned, tightens her wrists with cable ties and locks her in the trunk. Then he gets into the Audi Q3 and heads north: it is a kidnapping. Lorena regains consciousness. Her hands are tied in front, she manages to open the backpack that Federico hastily threw in with her, grabs the phone and calls 112. “Help!”. She says she has been kidnapped, tries to explain where she is, twenty minutes pass. It is that voice that sets the police operations room in motion. The phone races along the highway and the police chase after it. The hunt for the SUV on the A1 begins, a Stradale patrol from Pian del Voglio sets off. Meanwhile Vella hears her speak, notices the phone, stops the car and snatches it from her. The rest unfolds on the viaduct, along the north carriageway of the Panoramica, at the junction with the Direttissima. Federico opens the trunk, he is big and strong, lifts Lorena and carries her towards the barrier. The patrol arrives nearby when the woman is still on the bridge. Moments. The officers see her fall while the car is reaching the point where the Audi stopped.
The investigation
It will be the investigation by the Florence prosecutor’s office, led by Rosa Volpe and entrusted to prosecutor Antonio Di Natale, to reconstruct every step. The Mobile Squad led by Domenico Balsamo will acquire the Autostrade cameras and the bodycam footage. The autopsy will also have to determine if Lorena was still alive when she fell. For now there seem to be no doubts: femicide, yet another, followed by the man’s suicide. There is no trace of violence before yesterday in the records. No complaints or reports against Vella.
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Who they were
He, 36 years old, is from Florence and works in the car rental and corporate fleet sector. Lorena is 45, originally from Squinzano, in Lecce, has lived in Florence for some time and works as a manager in veterinary pharmaceuticals. She travels, goes to the gym, smiles in photos of the sea, birthdays, dinners, holidays.
The social posts
The same images that Federico gathered on August 12 in a reel on Instagram. Greece, Sardinia, a sea cave, the Ferris wheel at the Cascine, Ponte Vecchio in the background, a dinner, her ripped jeans, the bumper cars, work papers brought home, breathtaking sunsets of Florence. A couple’s life edited in a few minutes a few days before life breaks. On the screen scroll kisses, everyday life, her beautiful in a red dress before going out, them back to back on a rock. “Today my heart broke for the last time,” he writes. The plea, he asks for another chance. In the caption almost a premonition, an announcement: “Some fits are so perfect that, even if you separate them, the shape of the other stays on you forever. To you, who are the woman I loved with all my heart and lost because of my stupidity. I will be yours even if I can no longer be.”
We do not know if the relationship ended exactly on August 12. The post may have been edited later and Lorena, meanwhile, had deleted her profiles. His remained. Yesterday, shortly before the ambush in the garage, another story appears: “Silence after an argument is not punishment, it is not abandonment.” Then a second phrase, written in pink, about love and silence to avoid hurting. In the center two words: “Goodbye to all.” A few hours later the Audi is stopped on the Panoramica. The stretch between the Direttissima and Roncobilaccio is closed, firefighters arrive, the Mobile Squad, the prosecutor. Under the viaduct there are two bodies. Above, the car, the phones to analyze, the cameras. And the officers who saw Lorena appear in the rectangle of the windshield while they were still running. A few moments would have been enough. Those that, in tears, at the station they keep counting.
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