A homeless Gambian migrant is now under arrest after he allegedly tried to kidnap a 5-year-old girl from her mother’s hands in the Fontivegge train station in Perugia.
The incident occurred on the evening of Thursday, June 11, around 8 p.m. while a 40-year-old woman, originally from Arezzo, was waiting for a bus with her young daughter.
Suddenly, the suspect grabbed the child and began dragging her away, prompting the little girl to cry and the mother to scream for assistance. People in the vicinity were alerted to the emergency and rushed to the little girl’s aid.
Emergency services were also contacted and police officers rushed to the scene at Piazza Vittorio Veneto to arrest the suspect.
The mother managed to chase down the individual and successfully wrest her daughter away from the migrant.
The girl was uninjured but clearly shaken, according to Italian news outlet La Nazione.
“He was staring at us, then he yanked me,” the little girl reportedly told the police.
Despite the intervention, the man allegedly continued to harass the child until law enforcement officers arrived at the station perimeter to arrest him. The African has previous convictions for a variety of crimes.
🇮🇹Italy
In Bergamo, a Romanian migrant tried to kidnap a one-and-a-half-year-old girl at the entrance of a supermarket.
The mother and other witnesses managed to stop the man, but the little girl suffered a fractured femur.
The Romanian was arrested. pic.twitter.com/OpXHjlJot4
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) February 16, 2026A subsequent inspection of the suspect’s cell phone revealed that he had taken multiple photographs of the little girl prior to the incident. Investigators later verified the mother’s account of the events using the train station’s electronic video surveillance systems.
“My daughter is still terrified,” the mother stated.
So far, no video of the attempted kidnapping has been released.
The individual was taken into custody on charges of attempted kidnapping and was transferred to the Perugia prison facility under the authority of the local judiciary.
This is just one of many attempted kidnappings involving foreigners in Italy in recent years. In fact, Remix News dedicated an entire article to the topic, listing 11 separate cases in addition to this latest one.
