The abduction of a seriously ill 17-month-old boy, snatched from his home as he was being fed his evening bottle of milk, has mobilised a shocked Italian nation.
Soccer players sported T-shirts emblazoned with 'Free Tommaso' at the weekend, friends and sympathisers set up a web blog and even inmates in Italian prisons added their voice to appeals for the boy's release.
On Monday, the fourth day after Tommaso Onofri was abducted, newspapers again printed his photo and television news bulletins regularly relayed to an alarmed nation the latest developments in the police investigation.
The case has been made even more disturbing by the news that the boy needs regular doses of an anti-epilepsy medicine. Doctors say his life will be in danger if he does not get the drug Tegretol.
The child was grabbed from the Onofri family home in the countryside outside Parma on Thursday evening. According to his parents, the kidnappers first cut the power supply, plunging the house into darkness.
When the boy's father, Paolo Onofri, went outside to investigate, he was attacked by two masked men. The intruders, who were armed with a knife and a fake gun, bundled their victim inside and bound him, among with his wife and 8-year-old son.
Then, after taking about 150 euros but little else, they seized the child from his highchair and disappeared.
Investigators initially said they believed the infant was taken in order to demand a ransom. But according to police and the family's lawyer, no message has arrived from the abductors.
Now police are considering the possibility that the kidnapping may be linked to his father's job at the banking section of the local post office. He could have offended somebody by refusing a loan, they believe. On Monday a Parma prosecutor interviewed a prison inmate who claimed to have information relevant to the
investigation. The contents of the testimony, which came from a former state's witness, were not made public.
On Sunday, the boy's parents made an impassioned appeal on television, begging the people holding her son to give him his medicine. "We give him the Tegretol with a needle-less syringe, which he calls 'mommo'. Using this word is very important because it will calm him down," the father said.
The local priest in the village of Casalbaroncolo has offered to mediate with the boy's captors, urging them to
leave him in the village church if they don't want to have direct contact with anyone.
