- Inmate found dead in Padua prison cell
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27 March 2016 Carlo Bellotti, 54, the Ferrarese who yesterday attacked a 67-year-old taxi driver, Isauro Zarantonello in Bologna, was found dead in his cell, hitting him in the head with a glass breaker. Bellotti got into the car yesterday and asked to be accompanied on an isolated road: once on the spot he hit the taxi driver who managed to get out of the car and ask for help.Bellotti, drug addict, when he arrived in prison at Dozza he met a psychologist, who sent him to methadone treatment, finding him otherwise in normal conditions. At 10 pm he went to sleep, on the top of a bunk bed in a cell he shared with two foreigners, where around 3.30 he was regularly observed sleeping by the custodial agents. This morning, after 7, the cellmates noticed that something was wrong and the prison infirmary intervened. The magistrate on duty Michele Martorelli and the coroner Zeva Borin went to Dozza, who reported the death between 5 and 6 in the morning, excluding - on first examination - violent causes.
Bellotti had got into Zarantonelo's taxi yesterday and would have immediately attacked him: "He got in with the intent to kill me, luckily he wanted me to be able to block and disarm him, I feel miraculous", said the 67-year-old taxi driver. The victim of the attack ended up in the emergency room with a 10 centimeter cut to the head, medicated with 9 stitches.
According to the taxi driver, the attacker would not even have attempted to rob him: "If he had asked me for the money I could have considered whether to give it to him or not but as soon as I stopped I got a sharp blow to the head and began to run blood on my eyes and on the face ". The attacker, once disarmed, tried to hit him a second time with a metal hammer, and then to strangle him. "About twenty cars have passed and no one has stopped - he continued - only a Romanian boy with a truck went down and with a metal bracket stopped him. When the police arrived, it is as if he had already been handcuffed" .