Cerciello, the widow: “Two years without Mario, days too long and painful”

“Two years have passed, it has been missing for more than seven hundred days, too long and painful. But my husband Mario is with me always, he is present in everything that I have found myself living and facing without him, he is in every moment. It is he who gives me the strength, because Mario had a great desire to live ”. Thus Rosa Maria Esilio, widow of the deputy sergeant of the carabinieri Mario Cerciello Rega, remembers in an interview with Adnkronos her husband killed with eleven stab wounds on July 26 two years ago in Rome. For his murder on May 5, Finnegan Lee Elder and Christian Gabriel Natale Hjorth were sentenced to life in prison. “There were 43 very difficult hearings, which I always wanted to attend. The most complex moment – underlines the widow Cerciello, who was assisted in the trial by the lawyers Franco Coppi, Ester Molinaro and Massimo Ferrandino – for me and for those who attended that hearing, was listening to the anguished phone call in the courtroom to the operations center by the colleague who asked to send help because Mario had been stabbed and tried in vain to help him. “” A difficult moment for everyone present. Being there to listen to that excited moment, the voices, the tones, the labored and suffering breaths of my husband Mario – she says – marked and tore a time suspended between life and death, they were her last breaths, love of my life was dying. And all this tears inside. “Mario” was a just, courageous and loyal man – says Rosa Maria Esilio – who committed himself and sacrificed himself for the values ​​he believed in, every day in everyday simplicity, as Carabiniere and as husband, son, brother and friend. He was very generous, he dedicated his precious time to those who needed it, he gave his smile or a concrete help with such discretion and sensitivity, he was humble and honest, full of values ​​of other times and a strong sense of duty. His whole being is with me and in all that I find myself living. “” Sometimes I close my eyes and see him while he looks at me with his blue eyes and smiles at me while he squeezes my hand, with our fingers intertwined without leaving them , this gives me infinite courage. Mario – says Rosa Maria Esilio – lives in the memory of everyone, family, colleagues, friends and many common people. On June 5, during the celebration of the 207th anniversary of the founding of the Carabinieri, I was awarded the Gold Medal for Civil Valor in his memory, a moment so solemn and full of so much emotion and sentiments of honor. “” The July 13, his birthday, a commemorative stele was discovered placed in via Pietro Cossa in Rome, right where Mario was stabbed. An initiative that celebrates the memory of his sacrifice and – he highlights – honors him who proudly wore the uniform of the Carabinieri. Thanks to the Carabinieri and thanks to the Municipality of Rome. On the anniversary of his death we gather in prayer. There was a suffrage mass in his native town, Somma Vesuviana and there will be a suffrage mass in Rome. Many have participated and will participate by praying ”. (by Assunta Cassiano and Daniele Dell’Aglio)