An Italian senator on Sunday published video footage of a migrant who died after being shot by a railway police officer in Verona in 2024, sparking outrage across the country.
Ilaria Cucchi posted the video on Instagram, showing the aftermath of the Oct. 20, 2024, shooting of 26-year-old Malian national Moussa Diarra at the Porta Nuova railway station.
In the footage, an officer can be heard calling for an ambulance, saying: "I shot him, he was attacking me with a knife. I caught him, I don't know where I hit him, he still has the knife in his hand."
Cucchi criticized the officers' actions, arguing the young man was experiencing psychological distress linked to delays in renewing his residence permit and saying he was armed only with a small "table utensil."
"The commander of the municipal police organized an intervention to carry out an involuntary psychiatric commitment for the young man, who was clearly in distress," she wrote. "Then the Verona railway police stepped in. They had tasers and shields, but they chose to take only their guns."
She called for the investigation to continue and criticized Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini for saying the man would not be missed.
"We are in Verona, not Minneapolis," she added.
The officer's lawyer, Matteo Fiorio, rejected the allegations, calling them "serious inaccuracies and falsehoods."
He said Diarra suddenly attacked officers with a knife.
Fiorio said investigators' reconstruction of the shooting contradicts claims of intentional lethal force. According to his account, one shot was fired into the air as a warning, a second struck a window after passing through the man's hood, and a third hit his arm before deflecting toward his chest.
"The grief over Moussa Diarra's death is profound and must be respected, but the public debate must take place on the facts reconstructed in the official documents," he said.
