Victim twice. Of a ferocity that makes an impression and, perhaps, also of indifference. Sacko Bakari35 years old, originally from Mali, died at dawn on May 9th in the streets of the Old City of Tarantohit three times, once in the chest and twice in the abdomen, after being chased and attacked by a group of boys in Piazza Fontana. For his murder, aggravated by trivial reasons, four minors and an adult were arrested. A fifteen-year-old confessed and indicated the murder weapon to investigators.
According to the reconstruction of the investigators, Bakari was surrounded while he was on his bicycle. Initially managing to escape the pack, he was reached shortly afterwards and fatally shot. But what is shocking, in addition to the ferocity of the attack, is also the indifference that accompanied him in the last moments of his life: bleeding, the young man entered a bar asking for help, but without finding immediate help.
A life built far from home
That morning Bakari had left the house as he did every day. He had recently been working as a farm laborer in Massafra, half an hour’s drive away. His routine was simple: reach the station, leave the bicycle near the stop and take the bus to go to the fields. Before continuing, however, he stopped in Piazza Fontana. An unusual stop, perhaps for a coffee or a few minutes’ break. That’s where his life fell apart.
Bakari had arrived in Italy to work. After an initial period in Turin, in 2022 he moved to Taranto to join his brother, who later moved to Spain. He lived in an apartment shared with other workers and friends, a necessary arrangement to divide expenses and be able to support himself. Those who knew him describe him as a quiet, reserved, respectful man who did not look for problems. He had a large family behind him: three sisters and three brothers, now devastated by grief. Last January 24th he returned to Mali to embrace his loved ones again. There he had two wives, both now expecting a child. A bond never broken despite the years spent away from home and the weight of the distance.
The pain of the family
«You took the life of my brother, my older brother. You have taken away a father, a husband, a brother for no reason,” he said Souleymane Sackowho arrived in Taranto yesterday after a long journey from Spain, «my family is in tears and heartbroken. I will never forget this pain, and what they did.” It was she who welcomed him at Bari airport Caterina ContegiacomoTaranto volunteer for Mediterranea Saving Humans, who was the first to have to communicate the news to Bakari’s friends and roommates. «They didn’t want to believe it», he said, «they kept telling me that he had gone to work, that it wasn’t him, that there was a mistake. We are all still in shock because Bakari was a golden boy, silent, kind.”
The Church’s denunciation
The lead immediately followed by the investigators was that of a baby gang operating in the Old City, a neighborhood where social hardship continues to represent an open wound. The local Church has been trying for years to combat marginalization and violence with educational and inclusion projects, but the social fabric remains fragile. «We have shame on our faces, the Scripture would say. This is what I feel at the moment as parish priest of old Taranto. A sense of profound defeat, of impotence… this young victim dies twice. The first due to the futility armed by racism, the second at the hands of those who justify and do not invoke true justice”, he told Future don Emanuele Ferro, parish priest of San Cataldo and the churches of the old city.
The Archbishop of Taranto, Ciro Miniero, also intervened, recalling the need to invest in prevention and education: «Violence arises from educational and social poverty, from the marginalization of people. It is in prevention that we must invest efforts and resources: an educated, cohesive, peaceful society is a safer society.”
The indifference that hurts
Harsh words, those of Don Ferro, which call into question not only the material authors of the crime, but also a climate of dehumanization that slowly anesthetizes consciences. Because Bakari’s death cannot be dismissed as an episode of crime news. They are inside this story creeping racism, the throwaway culture, the violence that grows where education, work and hope are lacking. And above all there is a disturbing question: how do you manage to hit a defenseless man and leave him alone while he asks for help? Indifference is perhaps the most difficult wound to heal. It is the one that transforms the pain of the other into a distant fact, that accustoms us to turning away, that makes normal what is not normal. The ferocity of those who attack often arises long before the extreme gesture: it arises in tolerated hateful words, in repeated stereotypes, in daily humiliations, in looks that make one feel foreign and unwanted. Bakari was a man who worked, he paid the price of a life far from his land to guarantee a future for his family. Reducing him to a target, to the point of snuffing out his life, tells of a drift that questions the entire society.
The city’s response
In these hours, however, alongside the dismay, the desire to react also emerges. On Thursday at 5.30 pm, in Piazza Fontana, there will be a rally promoted by Free Tarantofrom the African community of Taranto, by Mediterranea Saving Humans and by the Babele association. A public moment to demand justice and say no to violence and racism. «Many people are writing to us to participate in the demonstration», explains Enzo Pilò, one of the organizers, «and this makes us believe that there will be widespread participation. Bakari’s story is that of many young people who live, work and pay taxes in Italy. Unfortunately, attacks are nothing new.”
Meanwhile, the Malian community of the Ionian city continues to demand justice for a man who had crossed deserts and borders in pursuit of a dignified life and who will now not see his children born. “No one deserves to die like this,” says Dembele Fallaye. And it is difficult not to recognize, in his words, a truth that concerns everyone.
