From the New York Post: A Staten Island native came face to face with the worst of Italy’s migrant crisis this week when he was nearly killed while vacationing in Milan.
Nick Pellegrino was attacked on a train Tuesday by a pair of North African migrants, who stabbed him in the neck with a 5-inch knife before making off with his luggage and jewelry — leaving him to die in a pool of his own blood in his family’s homeland, which has experienced a surge in criminal migrants over the past four years.
“With these very loose, lefty immigration laws, these immigrants come into these countries and they’re running amok, trying to murder people. It’s a playground for terror, for the vicious,” said Pellegrino, 29, speaking by phone from his hospital bed in the town of San Donato Milanese.
“It’s f–king crazy,” he said. “I know America has a big immigration problem, but it is worse here.”
The report explains that Pellegrino, a former high school teacher and coach, was visiting friends and family in Italy. While on board a train, he said he was looking down at his phone as the train rolled into the station.
After boarding the train, he said two Arabic-speaking men in their mid-20s, who were seated just a few rows away, kept staring at him, according to a report by SILIVE.com.
When the train stopped and the doors opened, the two men ran toward him and stabbed him in the neck, right in his jugular vein.
“They looked like the 9/11 hijackers,” Pellegrino recalled.
The attackers ripped the gold cross necklace from around Pellegrino’s neck, stole his luggage, and then fled the scene. He managed to stumble out of the train and onto the platform.
“I was left on the platform screaming for my life.”
A 16-year-old bystander reportedly called police for help.
“It took the ambulance 15 minutes to get to me,” Pellegrino said in the interview. “A few more minutes, and I was a goner. I could feel, with every heartbeat, another gush of blood coming out.”
Pellegrino wasn’t the only victim. The report notes that before he was attacked, the two migrants smashed an elderly man in the head with a glass bottle and stole an old woman’s necklace.
The Italian police have arrested the two migrants, but have not released their names publicly.
Pellegrino is scheduled to fly back home to the U.S. on July 24, and is expected to make a full recovery.
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