Tourist leaves daughter (4) in coma after street attack
A French tourist beat his four-year-old daughter's head against the stone base of a Rome monument so hard she was left in a coma, police said yesterday.
Blood stained the pavement at the Altar of the Nation, a towering stone monument to Italy's war victims, hours after the savage beating late on Saturday night in Piazza Venezia in the heart of Rome.
Bambino Gesu pediatric hospital said the child was comatose with severe head injuries.
Carabinieri Lt Col Antonello Casarsa said the man, identified as Julien Monnet (37) repeatedly struck the head of his daughter, Luna, against the stone after a traffic officer asked to see his identification. A Canadian tourist had told police he was acting strangely toward the child.
"He was holding the child in an unhealthy way. The child was crying and screaming," the traffic officer, Anna Esposito, told Italian state TV.
When Ms Esposito approached, the man quickened his step. She asked him what he was doing, and he said something she couldn't understand. Then the beating began.
Ms Esposito said, looking shaken said: "He was holding the girl by her arm and then started striking her (head) against the stone."
The Canadian grabbed the child as Ms Esposito struggled to hold the man, who, she said, was "like a furious beast".
The man tried to break loose and strike his own head against the monument base, but onlookers stopped him. His backpack contained medicine indicating he was undergoing psychiatric treatment.
Lt Col Casarsa said Monnet, who lived with the child's mother near Paris, was in shock when arrested. The mother was flying to Rome from Turkey, where she was on holidays. She had no idea the father and child had travelled from their Paris home.
- Frances D'Emilio in Rome
