Annalisa Durante (1990 – March 27, 2004) was a 14-year-old Italian girl and an innocent victim of the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia. She was killed in the Forcella quarter of Naples, during a clash between two rival Camorra clans.[1] While chatting with a friend and cousin outside her home she was grabbed as a human shield, and hit in the back of the head by a bullet. She died after being in a coma for several days.[2]
The local priest accused the state of leaving the neighbourhood to the mercy of the Camorra.[2] A message on a bouquet of flowers left on the mean street where Annalisa was shot appeared to speak for many in the neighbourhood: "Free us from these monsters, Goodbye Annalisa."[3] Thousands turned out for the emotionally charged funeral. Many mourners were in tears as they packed a parish church to pay tribute to Annalisa.[4]
The death of Durante finally induced Roberto Saviano to write his much-acclaimed book Gomorrah about the Camorra. In the book he describes her friends at the funeral: 'Many of these girls will soon marry Camorristi... Many will bear children who will be killed ... But for now they are just little girls in black. They weep for a friend ... Annalisa is guilty of having been born in Naples. Nothing more, nothing less. As her body is being carried away in its white coffin, a classmate calls her on her cellphone. The ringing in the coffin is the new requiem... No one answers.'[5]
The target of the shoot out was Salvatore Giuliano, a member of the powerful Giuliano clan who once controlled the Forcella neighbourhood. He was arrested on March 30, 2004.[6] In March 2006, he received a 24-year jail sentence for the killing.[7]
In 2005, her diary was published in Italian: