Italian Minister Says Modena Car Ramming Incident Can’t Be Dismissed as Act of Madman

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said on May 18 that an incident at the weekend in the northern city of Modena, in which eight people were injured when a second-generation immigrant allegedly drove a car into crowds of people, cannot be dismissed as “the act of an isolated madman.”

Eight people were injured, four critically, when the suspect, a 31-year-old Italian citizen of Moroccan descent named Salim El Koudri, allegedly drove into pedestrians on May 16 before crashing into a shop window.

Italian authorities said El Koudri tried to flee the scene and slashed someone with a knife, causing minor injuries, before he was overpowered by onlookers and then detained by the police. One of the victims, a woman who has not been named, remains in a life-threatening condition.

In an interview with the Il Giornale newspaper, Piantedosi said the incident does not fit the profile of a “terrorist planning violent actions” and that the individual had mental health issues. He said El Koudri had been diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder.

“He may have been driven by hatred linked to resentment over believing he had suffered discrimination. As things stand, he has shown no signs of structured Islamist radicalization, and he does not appear to belong to fundamentalist propaganda networks. From the searches and analysis of the phones, at the moment, no elements seem to be emerging that would fit the classic profile of a terrorist planning violent actions,” Piantedosi said.

“But we will have the exact classification when investigators complete their work and, in any case, all this cannot lead us to dismiss the attack as the act of an isolated madman. We are still talking about a deliberate assault against defenseless civilians, of absolute gravity, which raises profound questions about social distress, integration, and the identity paths of some second-generation individuals.”

The incident has fueled a long-running debate in Italy about immigration and social cohesion, which helped bring Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to power in 2022.

In a May 16 post on X, Meloni thanked “citizens who courageously intervened to stop the person responsible.”

“I have spoken with the Mayor and remain in constant contact with the authorities to follow developments in the case,” Meloni said. “I trust that the perpetrator will be held fully accountable for his actions.”

Piantedosi said El Koudri had at one point emailed his university and used insults toward Christians and other blasphemous expressions, but he later apologized.

Prosecutors arrested him on charges including massacre and aggravated injury. A court hearing on whether to validate his detention was postponed to May 19.

The minister said El Koudri was the son of Moroccan immigrants, born in Bergamo, in northern Italy, about 25 miles from Milan, and had graduated from college.

Unlike in the United States, being born in Italy does not confer citizenship, and Italian-born children of immigrants must apply for it later.

Mayor Defends Immigrants

Modena Mayor Massimo Mezzetti said it was “nonsense” to generalize about immigrants, noting that two Egyptians were among those who confronted and overpowered the attacker.

Thousands of residents gathered in Modena’s central Piazza Grande on May 17 to show solidarity with the victims.

As of Jan. 1, 2025, 6.9 million people in Italy were foreign-born, out of a population of 58.9 million, according to the EU’s official statistics agency, Eurostat.

“Those who are welcomed in Italy must respect its laws and values. … But we also need to debunk a myth: having a residence permit, or sometimes even citizenship, is not enough to say that integration has succeeded,” Piantedosi said.

“Integration is a much deeper and more complex process, involving education, legality, work, the sharing of democratic values, and real social conditions. Integration is a much deeper and more complex process, involving education, legality, work, the sharing of democratic values, and real social conditions. And sometimes, especially among second generations who grow up in contexts of hardship or marginalization, this path can fail.”

A report published in 2024 by the University of Oxford’s Measuring Irregular Migration project estimated that there are about 458,000 illegal immigrants in Italy.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.