Italian police on Tuesday identified and apprehended the five members of a teen gang who left an 18-year-old boy in a coma after a beating at Lanciano near Chieti in Abruzzo Sunday.
The local boy was attacked near Lanciano station by a group of
five local teens including some minors, police said.
He is in a chemically induced coma at Pescara hospital after
surgery to reduce an haematoma caused by a blow to the head,
medical sources said.
Hospital sources said he was in a critical condition.
The attack took place, police said, in an area where teenagers
congregate and where the use of alcohol and drugs is common.
The boy was with two friends including an underage girl when
they were set upon by the gang "for futile reasons", police
said.
The two friends managed to get away while the boy was felled by
the punch to the temple, police said.
Lanciano Mayor Mario Pupillo said "the very serious episode of
violence leaves us stunned and speechless".
There has been a wave of youth gang street violence in Italy
recently.
The beating death of a 21-year-old Italo-Cape Verdian chef,
Willy Monteiro Duarte, in Colleferro near Rome, allegedly by a
gang including two mixed martial arts specialists, shocked Italy
last month.
President Sergio Mattarella awarded one of Italy's top honours,
the gold medal, posthumously to Duarte and another person
recently killed while trying to help others, Father Roberto
Malgesini.
Duarte was beaten to death in the town near Rome after trying
to defend a friend who was being attacked.
Malgesini, who worked to help the poor and marginalised, was
stabbed to death in central Como by a homeless migrant with
mental-health problems.
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