“First instinct is to protect my family”- Ex-Serie A star claims he is uncomfortable being labeled as a ‘Hero’ after saving Arsenal’s Pablo Mari
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Despite intervening to stop the man who was guilty of several stabbings at a supermarket near Milan, Former Napoli defender Massimo Tarantino does not consider himself a hero. Pablo Mari, a defender on loan from Arsenal to Monza, was one of five people hurt in a horrific event on Thursday. After being disarmed by Tarantino, who has now stated his motivation for intervening, the suspect was apprehended.
He told Stats Perform: “I was with my wife and daughter, we were at the till. We were putting the stuff on the checkout belt, and we realised [that something was going on], because there were very loud screams. We all kind of stopped at the tills, trying to figure out what was going on. After a few seconds, from one of the aisles right next to our till, someone came out who was probably one of those who had been stabbed; he was shouting for help and had blood all over his shirt.”
“After a few more seconds, another man came out. It was the person with the knife who was unfortunately aiming at the tills where I was with my wife and child. There wasn’t much distance from that lane to the tills, about fifteen metres. So the instinctive reaction was to push my wife and daughter away and run. But in front of me there was this other employee who was between me and him, and he got stabbed.”
“In the stabbing, they probably both lost their balance and fell into the checkout shelves where all the sweets are. Then I had the instinct not to run away. I had taken a step back, but I didn’t run away and took advantage of the fact he was on the ground. I kicked him in the hand where he held the knife, and at that point he lost it, but it wasn’t too far away, so I quickly ducked down and threw it far away and immobilised him. At that point he had no reaction.”
Former Serie A defender Tarantino does not want to be labeled as a ‘Hero’ for his instinctive reaction saving Arsenal’s Pablo Mari
In spite of his actions, Tarantino – who played for Napoli between 1989 and 1996 and coincidentally also had a loan spell with Monza during his career – refused to be labelled a hero. “No, I don’t feel it belongs to me [this role] and I’m also a bit uncomfortable [with it],” he said. “I think heroes are other people. There are definitely people who do things that are impossible to do. They deserve, perhaps, that recognition.”
“I, again, just found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and maybe instinctively decided to make the right choice, but nothing more than that.” The 51-year-old said his instinct was to “protect my family” and insisted it was not something he thought a great deal about at the time, adding “I think the first instinct is to protect my family, so I just had the instinct to move them away, to get them away, to run away.”
“My instinct probably didn’t make me run away, but told me that maybe that was the ideal moment to help. So I didn’t go back, and I kicked this person in the hand holding the knife. But again, these things are irrational. When I think about it, it wasn’t a calculated, intentional thing, it was just an instinctive reaction.”
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Sujeeth Shetty
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