Italians hunt police killer
A manhunt is underway in Italy today for the killer of a police officer gunned down during a document check.
Police found the stolen motorcycle used by the suspect when he shot the officer on Thursday at a roadblock near the Adriatic resort of Pesaro, the Italian news agency ANSA said.
The motorcycle was found today near Rome’s central train station, ANSA said.
Officers were patrolling the capital with the suspect’s photograph on the dashboard of their cars. Police also were on the outlook for him elsewhere in central Italy in case he had escaped from Rome.
Citizens were flooding police switchboards with reports of alleged sightings of the man, Luciano Liboni.
“He could be anywhere, and all tips are being checked out,” Giuseppe Rubino, a deputy Rome police chief, told private SKY TG 24 television.
Liboni has been dubbed “The Wolf” for his ability to strike and flee. Before Thursday’s killing, he was wanted for other shootings and has a record for robberies. He has been on the run for about two years.
“He’s dangerous, desperate, full of anger,” the Milan daily newspaper Corriere della Sera quoted Rome Prefect Achille Serra as saying. Serra, in charge of security in the capital, added that Liboni has a fatal illness but didn’t specify it.
The suspect fired at two policemen who approached him yesterday morning near outdoor kiosks about a block away from Rome’s Stazione Termini, the capital’s principal railway station.
The man then stopped a passing car, forcing the driver to take him a short way until he jumped out of the car and dashed down the stairs of a subway entrance.
“He had the pistol in his hand, but I wasn’t thinking that he was some criminal, let alone a killer,”’ he told Corriere della Sera. “I thought he was an actor who was playing a part in some cop film.”
The motorist and his two children in the car were unhurt, as were the two police officers.
A fleet of helicopters was deployed in the skies over central Rome, and patrol cars were parked outside subway exits, some near major tourist sites such as St John Lateran Basilica.
Bus drivers told Italian state TV they saw the suspect yesterday at a terminal at the end of one of Rome’s subway lines, where passengers can catch buses to the suburbs.
Investigators said the suspect broke a hand in a fall from the motorcycle a day before the slaying of the Carabinieri police officer, and people at the bus terminal reported seeing a man with a bandaged hand.
