29-year-old Arsenal defender currently on loan to club Monza for Serie A, Pablo Mari's day took a drastic turn on Thursday when he was out shopping with his wife and son. It has been reported that an attacker decided to grab a Carrefour knife from the shelves and proceeded to attack six people including Pablo Mari and a cashier who died on the way to the hospital.
Mari had his four-year-old son in the trolley with him, when he was stabbed and then he saw the attacker stab one of the victims in his throat. The attacker has been detained by the police. While they didn't seem to find a motive behind his actions they did however report that the attacker may have been mentally unstable.
The 46-year-old has been named Andrea Tombolini and he has been under psychiatric care, convinced he has a tumour that will soon kill him. He admitted to the police that he felt ‘jealous’ when realising Monza and Arsenal player Pablo Mari was there. He said, "there was a Milan player among the clients. I felt jealous because he was doing well and I was not. So I struck him with a knife that was in my hand and I could’ve stopped there, but instead, I don’t know what got into me and I started striking other people too.”
He has been charged with murder and two counts of attempted murder.
Reports also say that a lot of watchers bravely intervened and disarmed the attacker before the authorities arrived and one of these people seemed to have been former Napoli and Intern Milan player Massimo Tarantino.
After the incident, Pablo was airlifted to the hospital, where he went through back surgery on Friday the 28th of October. The surgery was, fortunately, a success and Mari is said to be recovering well. Hopefully, Pablo will be back on the field for training in about two months.
Mari shared a heartfelt message on his Instagram feed saying he was fine and offering condolences to the family of the deceased. The post read "After the hard moment we experienced yesterday, both my family and I want to communicate that fortunately we are all fine despite the circumstances, and we want to thank all the messages of support and affection that we are receiving. In addition, we want to send our condolences and all our strength to the family and friends of the deceased person, and we sincerely wish that all injured people recover as soon as possible."
Mari has also said, "I was lucky because I saw a person die in front of me". Adriano Galliani, chief executive of Monza has said that although the wound is fairly deep, it is not life-threatening. He continued to say "Unfortunately, he also saw the criminal stab, someone, in the throat. He saw everything that happened and it was deeply disturbing.
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