Socialite who ran over and killed Moroccan mugger who stole her bag is charged with murder and faces life behind bars
Italian businesswoman Cinzia Dal Pino, 65, was caught on street CCTV ramming the thief with her white Mercedes GLE in Viareggio, Tuscany, in September last year.
Horrifying CCTV footage showed Dal Pino swerve off the road in her £80,000 car to plough into 52-year-old thief Nourdine Mezgoui.
As he falls to the ground, Dal Pino reverses and then drives forward, crushing him under the front wheels of her two-and-a-half-tonne motor.
But as Moroccan national Mezgoui writhes in agony, Dal Pino reverses and runs over him twice more until he stops moving.
Then she hops out of the SUV limo in her stiletto heels before she takes back her bag, gets back in the car and drives off.
Mezgoui was later declared dead at the scene after passersby called paramedics.
Now, officials at the Court of Assizes in Lucca have set Dal Pino's trial opening date on a charge of aggravated voluntary homicide for 24th September.
Pino told police earlier that Mezgoui had mugged her as she came out of a restaurant after a dinner date.
Her lawyer Enrico Marzaduri said: 'She didn't want to kill, but to stop the man and get her bag back.
'Inside it were her documents and house keys, and she was fearful he would have committed other crimes.'
But despite this fear, rather than calling police or paramedics Dal Pino calmly returned to the restaurant where she had been dining with friends before the attack to bring back an umbrella she had borrowed, local media reported.
Dal Pino admitted to police she had chased after him and had only wanted to get her bag back.
She told police: 'He had threatened to kill me with a knife. I was scared. I didn't mean to kill him I just wanted my belongings back.
'There were important documents in my bag and I couldn't call the police because my phone was in there.'
Officers later revealed no knife had been found on Mezgoui and Dal Pino was initially held in jail on suspicion of manslaughter before being freed under house arrest.
Her lawyer Enrico Marzaduri dismissed the video and said last year: 'I understand from the autopsy that it was certainly the initial impact that proved fatal and there are no tyre marks on the body.
'She just wanted to stop him and was aiming for his legs. She is suffering for what she did and is feeling remorse for what happened.'
Dal Pino, a well known socialite in the Italian coastal city, was identified through her SUV's number plate and arrested by police just hours after the incident.
The high-flying socialite, who has been under house arrest for the past 10 months, is also accused of cruelty, deceitful methods and killing her victim while he was unable to defend himself.
Marzaduri's motion to downgrade the charge to self-defence or manslaughter was rejected by the court.
Dal Pino faces life behind bars if convicted.
Police had been monitoring Mezgoui in the lead up to his death and had wanted to repatriate him, but authorities had not responded to their requests, meaning he had remained at large in Viareggio.
Mezgoui's family in Morocco spokenof their horror following the incident, saying that justice must be served and slamming Italian authorities for placing Dal Pino under house arrest rather than in jail.
'Not even an animal is killed in this way,' his sisters told Moroccan channel Chouf TV, adding: 'We ask for justice for our brother, Cinzia Dal Pino must remain in prison.'
Mezgoui's family said of the 52-year-old, who had lived in Italy for 24 years: 'He was a good man and we want justice. Everyone who knows him will tell you that. She ran over him four times and then just calmly drove off when he was dying and didn't even ask for help.'
Local archbishop monsignor Paolo Giulietti said just after the mugger's death: 'Other than self-defence, the video shows astonishing behaviour.
'How do you drive your car over a person's body several times? How could we think that a quiet and esteemed lady, a capable entrepreneur, could carry out such an action?
'Evil wins when it makes us evil: those who rejoice because this episode would be an episode of self-defence demonstrate how evil wins.
'I say, let's not rejoice, this is not self-defence, and it is not justice. Nothing, absolutely nothing can justify murder.
'Not just because we live in a state of law. But because every person, in every situation they find themselves in, has the right to live.'
Italy's deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini took a different view and wrote on Facebook: 'This drama is the consequence of a crime. If the man who lost his life hadn't been a delinquent this wouldn't have happened.'
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