Italian jeweller shoots dead thief during attempted robbery

Pisa (Italy), June 15 (IANS/AKI) A jeweller shot dead one of two men who allegedly tried to rob his shop on the outskirts on the central Italian city of Pisa, police said.

Police are searching for the second would-be thief who ran off after the attempted robbery in northeast Pisa at around 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday.

The jeweller, named in local reports as 69-year-old Daniele Ferretti, claimed the would-be robber was armed and opened fire on him first.

"He was the first to shoot and I returned fire. The cartridges are on the floor of my shop. He fired many shots and so did I," Ferretti told police called to the scene, regional daily Il Tirreno reported on its website.

Ferretti told police he was in his shop with his wife at the time of the attempted robbery and that the second would-be thief escaped from the scene with two accomplices after the deadly firefight, the daily said.

The paper cited unnamed witnesses as saying the would-be robbers were armed with at least one pistol, which could have been a toy.

An autopsy was due to be carried out on the man allegedly killed by Ferretti. He was reportedly pale-skinned, aged between 30 and 40 and did not have any identity document on him, according to Il Tirreno.

Ballistics and forensic experts were examining Ferretti's shop and prosecutors were due on Wednesday to announce if the jeweller would be formally probed over the killing - possibly for manslaughter or "wrongful self-defence", the paper reported.

The leader of Italy's anti-immigrant Northern League party, Matteo Salvini praised Ferretti's actions.

"Solidarity to Danield, a 69-year-old worker. He did well!" Salvini wrote on Facebook.

Recent years have seen a spate of cases in Italy where citizens have been put under investigation after they killed or injured alleged robbers or burglars, sparking controversy and angering many on the political right who claim the citizens acted in legitimate self-defence.

In May, Italy's lower house of parliament backed a long-delayed bill giving citizens the right to respond with force to robbers or to burglars who enter a property at night, even if this proves fatal.

Robbery victims would still need to prove "proportionality" between the crime committed against them and their defence under the bill, which still needs to be approve by Italy's Senate or upper house of parliament.

(This story has not been edited by Social News XYZ staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)