A Chinese man shot a Chinese woman in
the head Thursday night in an ongoing textile war linked to
European Triad gangs in the Tuscan city of Prato.
Earlier this week a Chinese couple were shot to death, execution
style, in a Rome suburb in the war.
Doctors removed a bullet from the woman's throat where it had
lodged after being deflected down from her forehead.
The so-called 'war of the hangers' has been raging for some
three years now.
The Chinese couple were shot dead in Rome Monday night as the
Triad war based in Prato spilled over into the Italian capital.
At least six gunshots were fired late Monday evening against the
couple in via Prenestina, near the Pigneto district of the
Italian capital, police said.
The pair were returning home by bike when, a few meters from the
building where they lived, the killers approached on a
motorcycle and opened fire.
The victims were hit in the back of the head.
Prosecutors in
Prato, which has Italy's largest Chinese community specialising
in textile making, said that the war of Chinese organized crime
for the monopoly of logistics in the clothing sector, which in
the last two or three years has resulted in the so-called 'war
of the hangers' of Prato, was likely the backdrop for the
shooting death of the pair, Zhang Dayong, 53, and his wife Gong
Xiaoqing, 38.
The double homicide could well be a revenge killing, the
prosecutors said, that arose amid Chinese crime in Italy, where
the escalation could demonstrate that structures consolidated
for decades are now being shaken.
The two victims were reportedly linked to a fight between
cartels being fought openly throughout Europe with Prato as its
epicenter.
In particular, the murdered man, nicknamed Asheng, had been one
of the main defendants in the 2018 'China Truck' investigation,
coordinated by the magistrates of the DDA anti-mafia directorate
of Florence, on the activity of Chinese trafficking gangs
especially in the field of clothing linked to logistics in
Prato.
The investigation revealed the presence in the Tuscan city of
top figures, throughout Europe, of the Chinese mafia, connected
to the mother country.
Finally, it was stressed that Zhang Dayong was one of the
closest collaborators of a central figure in these Tuscan
investigations into Chinese criminal feuds, namely the boss
Zhang Naizhong, considered at the top of the organization that
now, since 2024, appears to be under attack.
In recent months there has been a criminal escalation in Prato
with violence, assaults with attempted murders, and arson
attacks on companies in other parts of Tuscany, and also in
Madrid and Paris.
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