FLORENCE. Flowers, candles, applause and tears, many tears for Lorena and for those who remained to endure the pain of her loss. Over a thousand people responded tonight – Sunday, September 6 – to the call of the mayor of Florence, Sara Funaro, and gathered in front of the entrance of the house where Lorena Isceri lived, the woman kidnapped Thursday afternoon by her ex-boyfriend Federico Vella and thrown less than an hour later from the Lora viaduct on the Autostrada del Sole, in the municipality of Barberino di Mugello, before he also threw himself into the void.
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The embrace with the mother
The risk is not to forget. The risk is to get used to horror, to turn the page when reading about a femicide, to move on, to remove. For this reason, many wanted to stop tonight in front of the garage on via Panciatichi, Rifredi district, where Lorena’s martyrdom began. At the windows many red drapes, the only sign left by the tragedy in a street that apparently has returned to everyday normality.
Around 9:30 p.m. the embrace with Antonia, Lorena’s mother, who came down to the sidewalk from the apartment where her daughter lived until Thursday. A long embrace and whispered words of comfort in the ears, covered by the woman’s sobs, who then only had the strength to say “thank you all for being here.” In her eyes is the same pain that tonight marks the faces of Michela Noli’s parents, the Florentine hostess who on May 15, 2016, was killed by her ex-husband in Isolotto with numerous stabbings. They have a vacant look, but they came to say one thing: “Parents must teach their children to ask for help.”
Perhaps in this case they are addressing not so much Lorena’s parents, but Federico’s parents, because now it is clear that he too needed help after losing himself in a delirium that led him to burn everything around him, including Lorena and himself.
Sara Funaro wanted two other mayors beside her, Elena Carnevali of Bergamo and Vittoria Ferdinandi of Perugia, in Florence for the Festa dell’Unità. Together with them many Florentines who wanted to show their closeness to the victim’s family.
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The words and the appeal of the father
“The femicide of Lorena Isceri is a tragedy that shook the entire city – Funaro had written on Instagram – We cannot and must not get used to these tragedies, nor accept that they are reduced to a fatality. We must say it loudly and clearly: it is not jealousy, it is not passion, it is not love. Obsession, the claim of possession and violence destroy women’s lives.” Concepts repeated tonight with two additions: “You must report at the slightest sign of risk,” said the mayor. She addresses victims of violence, those who risk the same fate as Lorena, but also those around them. To those who can give victims the strength to protect themselves. But this is probably not enough. The mayor is convinced that a great work must be done in schools, in other words to promote emotional education on the correct relationships between the sexes: “We in Florence are already doing it, I hope the government will want to do it too.”
In recent hours, support for the appeal of Lorena’s father, Franco, has multiplied, who on Saturday with tears in his eyes asked politics to take action: “With her at the bottom of that overpass is also buried the will to live of a destroyed family. I ask all politics to be united. Take measures unanimously, without right or left, so that tragedies like Lorena’s never happen again.”
The candles go out, politics makes yet another commitment while waiting for another femicide to shine a spotlight on, cars start flowing again along via Panciatichi and soon the red drapes will disappear too. But the greatest commitment that the thousand tonight made with Lorena’s memory is not to get used to it.
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