An Italian female Carabiniere saved
the life of a 49-year-old woman who had threatened to kill
herself by jumping off her balcony near Naples Tuesday night
after the latest episode of domestic violence she had suffered.
"Life is such a precious gift, don't waste it for a man who is
humiliating you," the 30-year-old Sicilian cop, Sonia
Cannistraci, told the would-be suicide on the ledge at San
Giorgio a Cremano.
Cannistraci said it had been a hard job persuading the woman not
to end her life to put an end to the suffering her partner was
subjecting her to.
"She didn't even want to look at me," said Cannistraci.
"She already had a leg over the rail but luckily I eventually
managed to establish a contact, also visual, with her.
"When I realized there was empathy between us I told her that
life is a too-precious good to throw it away on a man who was
just humiliating her.
"That was when I understood that she had decided to listen to me
and to desist".
Cannistraci said "the hardest thing was to put myself on her
wavelength and in tune with her suffering, she was totally
gripped by rage and panic.
"Luckily I managed to get her to listen to me and from that
moment on my one goal was to make her understand that it wasn't
worth it."
Cannistraci said the woman had had a history of domestic abuse
but had never summoned up the courage to report her partner.
"Our message is that you must absolutely report abuse to end the
ordeal," she said.
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