On December 2, just before eleven p.m., Davide Giri was stabbed to death in New York.

Giri, 30 years old, came from the Piedmont region of Italy and was a PhD student in computer science at Columbia University.

Giri was on his way home from soccer practice, a defender with New York International FC.

Giri succumbed to his stab wounds on the way to the hospital.

Matthias Rüb

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.

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The bloody act occurred near the intersection of Amsterdam Avenue and West 123rd Street in Upper Manhattan, not far from Morningside Park.

A few blocks away in December 2019, 18-year-old Tessa Majors from Virginia, a music student at Barnard College, was robbed and stabbed by three teenagers between the ages of 13 and 14.

The murder caused quite a stir at the time: Because the (white) victim was so young - and the (black) perpetrators who had been convicted in the meantime were even younger.

Three attacks in one night

A few hours after Davide Giri's death, the 25-year-old black Vincent Pinkney was arrested as an urgent suspect. Pinkney is also accused of stabbing another man less than fifteen minutes after the attack on Giri. The second victim was also an Italian, 27-year-old Roberto Malaspina from Perugia, who had only arrived in New York the day before to begin studying at Columbia University. Malaspina was injured in the back and abdomen. He survived the severe stab wounds.

Pinkney was arrested after a third attack that night. No one was injured in this latest attack in the northern part of Central Park on a couple who were walking their dog. Due to the description of the perpetrator by the attacked, Pinkney was arrested immediately after the third attack. An eyewitness was quoted by the police as having observed that Pinkney had "happily hopped around" shortly before the officers were attacked. It was later said Pinkney may have been under the influence of metamphetamine. It is unclear whether Pinkney is linked to another knife attack on the evening of December 1st. In this attack, also near Morningside Park, a tourist from Germany was seriously injured in the neck and neck.One of the stitches missed the 43-year-old German's carotid artery by just a few centimeters.

The knife attacks in Manhattan found wide coverage in the Italian media.

Not only because of the two victims from Italy, but above all because of an article by Federico Rampini in “Corriere della Sera” on December 7th.

Rampini, born in 1956, is one of the most prominent Italian journalists. He has written for all of the country's leading quality newspapers and is the author of numerous non-fiction books.

Before moving to the liberal-conservative “Corriere” column as a columnist, he was a correspondent for the left-wing liberal “La Repubblica”, including in San Francisco and New York.