Italy - drugged tourist stumbles into train's path

[John Ashworth]

Tourist stumbles into train's path after being drugged by thief

* Tom Kington in Rome
* The Guardian,
* Tuesday May 27 2008

An elderly American tourist who accepted a drugged cappuccino from a stranger at a station in Rome was relieved of his luggage before he stumbled in a daze on to rail tracks and was killed by an express train.

The incident is the latest in a series of robberies and railway thefts carried out in Italy using drugs to overpower victims. Police have arrested a man in connection with the Rome incident after viewing CCTV footage taken at the station.

The tourist, Hungarian-born Frank Phel, 74, arrived with his wife at Rome's Tiburtina station on Thursday evening from the port of Civitavecchia after a holiday cruise in the Mediterranean.

"The couple were planning to take a bus from outside the station the next morning to go to Hungary, but did not know Rome and were fearful of leaving the station, so planned to get some sleep in the waiting room," said Felice Addonizio, chief of the city's railway police.

The station is a magnet for petty thieves. "There was a rough crowd arguing in the waiting room at around midnight, and the couple were given some reassurance by a middle-aged man who then offered them both a cappuccino," Addonizio said.

The couple woke from their drugged sleep the following morning to find their luggage and valuables missing. Telling his wife he would call the police, Phel left the waiting room, but set off down the tracks in a daze, where he was hit by the Rome-Florence train.

Police believed the death to be suicide until finding Phel's wife hours later as she implored the driver of the bus to Hungary to delay his departure so she could continue searching for her husband.

Using CCTV footage, Phel's wife was able to identify the man carrying two cappuccinos towards the couple. He was arrested near the station. Police say the man, from near Naples, is believed to have drugged and robbed an elderly Italian near the station on a previous occasion.

Gangs using narcotic spray to carry out train robberies are also on the rise in Italy, police said. The gangs board sleeper trains and drug passengers in couchettes before hopping off at stations with valuables.