After 14 years, on November 7, a turning point came in the murder of Angelo Vassallo. The Special Operational Group of the Carabinieri of Rome has implemented a detention order in prison against four people, including two carabinieri. They are the Carabinieri officer Fabio Cagnazzo, the former brigadier of the Carabinieri Lazzaro Cioffi, the entrepreneur Giuseppe Cipriano and Romolo Ridosso, son of the boss and collaborator of justice of the Loreto-Ridosso clan.
The writer knew him. Vassallo was known as the “fisherman mayor”, having chosen the sea of his Acciaroli, a town in the municipality of Pollica (Sa), as a school of life. Then, one night on 5 September 2010, returning home in an Audi A4, he was blocked by a car and shot nine times. The drug trail, the one that Vassallo had tried to fight with his bare hands in his Acciaroli, should be the cause of the murder. A drug trafficking which, from land and sea, had dirtied a pearl of Cilento and its inhabitants. Vassallo was a civilian hero. He couldn’t bear that such a devastating danger could contaminate what had become a life purpose: the rebirth of his town.
For Pollica, he had decided to get involved in politics as mayor, a successful bet that had made him a positive reference for the entire Cilento. A convinced environmentalist, he had decided to lead a small community, a coastal municipality in Cilento linked to growing marginality.
«It’s enough to do the normal thing well» – he said with a shrug of the shoulders and a half smile, when the first Blue Flags began to arrive in his Acciaroli and the recognitions always at the top in the national rankings of Legambiente and various entities such as the Touring Club in thanks to beauty, livability and naturalistic respect.
President of the «Slow Cities» in the world and of the Alento Monte Stella Mountain Community, he based his action to defend the environment starting from the separate collection of waste. Followed by that of water purification, in 2010 it imposed very high fines on those who threw cigarette butts on the ground and on the beach.
And the ideals of this fisherman, elected mayor from 1995 to 2010, also spread on the beaches of Pioppi, in the capital Pollica and in the hilly hamlets of Cannicchio, Celso and Galdo, proving that not only the marinas but also the more inland areas could rise from torpor. Vassallo did not lack imagination and originality (like the presence of Hemingway in Acciaroli), all ideas devoted to the success of a location which today is among the most popular seaside resorts in Italy.
He was responsible for the proposal to UNESCO to include the Mediterranean Diet among the intangible heritage of humanity, enhancing history and traditional cuisine. The idea was accepted by UNESCO on 16 November 2010.
Today, after 14 years, his wife, two children, brothers, friends and the many who supported him are starting to understand something more about that night in 2010, about those investigations diverted by those who should have protected him and instead were plotting against him. him.
