A Chinese couple were shot dead in
Rome Monday night as a Triads war based in Prato spilled over
into the Italian capital, Italian police said.
At least six gunshots were fired late Monday evening iagainst
the couple in via Prenestina, near the Pigneto district of the
Italian capital, police said.
The pair were returning home by bike when, a few meters from the
building where they lived, the killers approached on a
motorcycle and opened fire. The victims were hit in the back of
the head.
Prosecutors in the Tuscan city of Prato, which has Italy's
largest Chinese community specialising in textile making, said
that the war of Chinese organized crime for the monopoly of
logistics in the clothing sector, which in the last two or three
years has resulted in the so-called 'war of the hangers' of
Prato, is likely the backdrop for the shooting death of the
pair, Zhang Dayong, 53, and his wife Gong Xiaoqing, 38.
The double homicide could well be a revenge killing, the
prosecutors said, that arose in the same context of Chinese
crime in Italy, where the escalation could demonstrate that
structures consolidated for decades are now being shaken.
The two victims, according to what is being reconstructed, were
linked to the context of the fight between 'cartels' which at
this point is being fought openly throughout Europe, starting
from the textile district of Prato which is its epicenter.
In particular, the murdered man, nicknamed Asheng, had been one
of the main defendants in the 2018 'China Truck' investigation,
coordinated by the magistrates of the DDA anti-mafia directorate
of Florence, on the activity of Chinese trafficking gangs
especially in the field of clothing linked to logistics in
Prato.
The investigation revealed the presence in the Tuscan city of
top figures, throughout Europe, of the Chinese mafia, connected
to the mother country.
Finally, it was stressed that Zhang Dayong was one of the
closest collaborators of a central figure in these Tuscan
investigations into Chinese criminal feuds, namely the boss
Zhang Naizhong, considered at the top of the organization that
now, since 2024, appears to be under attack.
In recent months there has been a criminal escalation in Prato
with violence, assaults with attempted murders, and arson
attacks on companies in Tuscany and also in Madrid and Paris.
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