He stood motionless with the dagger in his hands. He was looking out of the window and repeating incomprehensible sentences, they seemed to be addressed to no one, to the passers-by, it was impossible to understand him clearly. I only understood one word, repeated three times: “Allah, Allah”. Giuseppe Mazzone, 35, is a bus driver who the other night enabled the police to arrest a confused man armed with a knife who had boarded his bus in Venice. We were at the station,” he told Il Gazzettino, “I saw the passengers getting off one by one. Then I realised why: this man, a middle-aged foreigner, was standing there in plain sight with this knife, uttering these absurd sentences”.
When the bus started up again, Mazzone first called the operations centre but could not communicate: “I didn’t want to attract attention, I didn’t want to upset him. He kept staring at me, I was afraid he would hurt someone”. So he started driving again and continued towards Via Torino. At that moment, he called 112 using a code phrase: “Auntie, I’m here, the bus is in trouble”. A banal communication with a specific word to alert the police. The police cars responded to the call. “I told them I was stopping in front of the editorial office of the ‘Gazzettino’. They advised me to stop the bus immediately”. When he arrived at the agreed point, Mazzone stopped the bus. “I told the remaining passengers that it was better to get off – I did it because this man kept staring at me, I wanted to get out of this cage and get the other two to safety. Also because at this time, 7pm, there are usually a lot of people in this area: University students, commuters from the region. When we got out, I counted the seconds, I waited for the police to arrive”. Six uniformed men asked the man to show his knife and kneel down, but the man continued to look at them standing. At that moment, they pushed him to the ground and fixed him with the Taser (he had resisted as soon as the policemen approached).
His act provoked thunderous applause from politicians and those in charge of Venice’s public transport companies. First and foremost the President of the Region, Luca Zaia: “He has shown great professionalism, cold-bloodedness and an unusual ability to deal with an objectively dangerous situation. What the driver of a public transport company in Mestre did today is a real demonstration of citizenship, responsibility and competence. I thank him and congratulate him”.Il Gazzettino