A right-wing extremist suspected in the shooting rampage that wounded six Africans in central Italy was "lucid and determined, aware of what he had done" and exhibited no remorse for his actions, an Italian law enforcement official says.
Luca Traini, 28, remains in jail as police investigate him on multiple counts of attempted murder with the aggravating circumstance of "racial hatred" for the Saturday attacks in the Italian city of Macerata.
The five men and one woman were wounded in the two-hour drive-by shooting spree were from Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia and Mali, according to RAI state television.
Italian authorities said they seized Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, other publications linked to Nazism and a flag with a Celtic cross, a symbol commonly used by white supremacists, from Traini's home Sunday.
Traini, who is Italian, was an unsuccessful candidate last year in a local election for the anti-migrant Northern League political party. Italy's ANSA news agency quoted acquaintances saying he previously had ties with the neo-fascist Forza Nuova and CasaPound parties.
Photographs released by police showed Traini with a neo-Nazi tattoo prominently on his forehead and an Italian flag tied around his neck.
Col. Michele Roberti, the Carabineri commander in Macerata, told Sky TG24 that Traini demonstrated no remorse for the two-hour rampage and "it's likely that he carried out this crazy gesture as a sort of retaliation, a sort of vendetta" for the gruesome slaying of a teenager a few days earlier.
A Nigerian man has been arrested in the death of Pamela Mastropietro, 18. Mastropietro's dismembered remains of were found in two suitcases days after she walked away from a drug rehab community.
The shooting spree also came amid a heated electoral campaign in Italy where anti-foreigner sentiment has become a key theme. Italy has struggled with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants in the last few years coming across the Mediterranean Sea in smugglers' boats.
Italy has a general election scheduled for March 4.
