Translated automatically by AI from the Italian original.
CATANIA / AUGUSTA (SR) – A major drug-dealing hub in the heart of the San Cristoforo district in Catania has lost one of its emerging suppliers. The Carabinieri from the investigative unit of the Catania provincial command have arrested an unsuspecting 26-year-old, considered a rising figure in the marijuana market and active in the well-known Passareddu area, specifically around the streets near via Poulet.
Although investigators found no direct links to organised crime, the young man had managed to carve out his own independent market niche, regularly supplying local pushers.
Surveillance between via Plebiscito and the villa in Agnone Bagni
The operation was not a stroke of luck but the result of a lengthy monitoring effort by the Carabinieri in the San Cristoforo district. After gathering circumstantial evidence against the 26-year-old, the Carabinieri set up observation and surveillance operations both around his home on via Plebiscito in Catania and near his summer residence in Agnone Bagni, a seaside hamlet in the Municipality of Augusta (Syracuse).
What triggered the raid were the young man’s frequent and unexplained trips between the two provinces. The 26-year-old was stopped by the Carabinieri right at the door of his Catania home as he was about to go inside.
1 kg of drugs found in a disused fridge, then the raid in the Syracuse area
A subsequent house search in Catania revealed a bag inside a broken fridge containing 1 kg of marijuana already divided into ready-to-sell doses, as well as eight grams of hashish and weighing and packaging materials.
The inspection then extended to the villa in Agnone Bagni, where the Carabinieri recovered a further 450 grams of marijuana, more packaging materials and two bullets of different calibres.
The 26-year-old’s arrest was upheld by the preliminary investigations judge.
