Italian Who Murdered Ogorchukwu Alika Jailed For 24 Years
The Court of Assizes of Macerata sentenced Filippo Ferlazzo , 33 years old, originally from Salerno, to 24 years of imprisonment for the aggravated voluntary homicide of the Nigerian street vendor Alika Ogorchukwu , which occurred in Civitanova Marche on 29 July 2022.
Civitanova Marche, the girlfriend’s scream to Ferlazzo: “What have you done?”. The victim’s lawyer: “If he had psychiatric problems, why wasn’t he supervised?”
The victim had asked for alms from the accused and his partner, whose arm he had touched: Ferlazzo had hit him with the crutch that the Nigerian used to walk, then climbed on top of him, crushing his neck and head .
“Justice has been done, 24 years in prison is fine,” said Alika Ogorchukwu’s wife, commenting on the sentencing.
Charity, accompanied by the lawyer Francesco Mantella and some members of her family, stopped to speak briefly with journalists just outside the Macerata court, where the hearing took place. Particularly shaken, the woman repeated several times that she “accepted” the sentence decided by the judges of the assize court. She followed the entire hearing sitting in the rows behind the lawyers. When the sentence was read she had no apparent reaction, only her shining eyes revealed her state of mind.
“I only had a six-year discount”, said Filippo Ferlazzo immediately after reading the sentence issued by the judges of the Court of Assizes of Macerata.
This was reported to journalists by his defense lawyer, the lawyer Roberta Bizzarri, who added: “I had also prepared Filippo for the possibility of a life sentence which in his mind is equivalent to 30 years of imprisonment and therefore, the His is a joke that’s worth what it’s worth.”
Lawyer Bizzarri said she was “satisfied with the sentence, given that the maximum sentence had been requested, but it will be necessary to read the reasons”. You said you are thinking about appealing, but made it clear that it is a decision yet to be made.
During her final speech, the lawyer had asked for a detention facility alternative to prison for her client, “but the judges – she explained – have said that to date there is insufficient evidence to evaluate a release from prison”.
The judges of the assize court of Macerata – president Roberto Evangelisti, alongside Federico Simonelli – did not in fact accept the request for life imprisonment which had been advanced by the prosecutor Claudio Rastrelli, but granted the generic mitigating circumstances, equivalent to the aggravating ones, thus applying the maximum sentence which in these cases is 24 years.
A sentence that Ferlazzo, a young man of Campania origin, will have to serve in prison. On the compensation front, the judges have currently granted a provisional amount of 350 thousand euros in favor of Alika’s wife and son and 40 thousand euros each to the other family members admitted as civil parties. The accused was instead acquitted for the crime of robbery, after the fatal attack he found the murdered Nigerian’s mobile phone in his pocket.
