Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will visit on Sunday people wounded by a driver with a history of mental health problems who ran over pedestrians in a city centre in northern Italy.
The driver, an Italian of Moroccan heritage, hit several people before crashing into a shop window, colliding head-on with a woman.
The incident in Modena wounded eight people, four of them seriously, including a woman who had to have both legs amputated.
Meloni cancelled a planned visit to Cyprus to go to Modena, a government source said.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella will also travel to the northern Italian city, the source said.
Italian media broadcast security camera footage showing a car speeding into a city centre street packed with pedestrians and cyclists.
The suspect tried to flee the scene, but four passers-by chased and cornered him, then he pulled a knife and injured one of them.
City prefect Fabrizia Triolo said at a news conference on Saturday that the driver, an economics graduate born in 1995 who was not known to the police, experienced a “psychological disturbance” in 2022.
“He had been treated at a mental health centre for schizoid disorders, but we lost track of him after that initial period of observation in a care facility,” she added.
According to the prefect, the driver was not under the influence of “psychotropic substances.”
His home near Modena has been searched.
The head of the Emilia-Romagna region, Michele de Pascale, told the news conference on Saturday it was an “extremely serious act, but it is important to understand its nature and motive; let us wait for more information."
Meloni wrote on X that the incident was grave.
“I would also like to express my thanks to the citizens who courageously intervened to detain the perpetrator, as well as to the law enforcement officers for their response,” she added.
Modena's mayor, Massimo Mezzetti, thanked “those citizens who showed courage and civic duty.”
He added, “We need to understand what’s behind this act. But it was a dramatic event.
“I am deeply shaken,” he continued.
