A Woman's Call to Emergency Services From the Trunk of a Car Could Not Save Her, Italy's Seventh Femicide Since Mid-August

Lorena Isceri, 45, was killed on the afternoon of September 3 by her former partner, Federico Vella, in a case investigators are treating as the latest in a string of femicides that has struck Italy since mid August. Isceri, originally from Squinzano near Lecce but a longtime resident of Tuscany, was ambushed in the garage of her home in Florence, restrained, and forced into the trunk of Vella's SUV, according to the initial reconstruction by investigators.

As Vella drove north on the A1 motorway, Isceri managed to reach her phone from inside the trunk and called 112, Italy's emergency number. She stayed on the line for several minutes, telling operators he had kidnapped her and wanted to kill her, in what investigators believe was an attempt to help them track the moving vehicle in time. Police did trace the call to the vehicle's location, but arrived after Vella had stopped the car, taken the phone from her, and thrown her from an overpass. He then jumped from the same bridge, killing himself.

Isceri's mother has said her daughter had spoken to her about the relationship and described being very afraid of Vella, a detail that places her death inside a pattern that has repeated through nearly every femicide case Italy has recorded this year, a woman naming her fear before the system built to respond to it failed to move fast enough.

Isceri is the seventh woman killed by a current or former partner in Italy since August 15, a rate that has renewed pressure on lawmakers and law enforcement over how reports of fear and prior warning signs get acted on before they turn fatal, rather than after. Her emergency call reached the people meant to help her. It did not reach her in time.