Man kills father with hammer and fire in Cinisello Balsamo; same son was convicted in a 2017 homicide

The early-morning attack

Carabinieri from the Cinisello Balsamo station responded to reports of a house fire in the Milan suburb during the early hours of 11 June 2026. Together with the Sesto San Giovanni mobile unit, officers used extinguishers to fight the flames before firefighters arrived. Inside they found the body of a 73-year-old man and detained his 47-year-old son, Raffaele Arena, at the scene.

Investigators believe Arena first struck his father with a blunt object, then doused him with a flammable liquid and set him alight. The victim died in the fire. Arena is described in multiple reports as likely suffering from a personality disorder.

The 2017 precedent

Arena had a prior homicide on his record. In 2017 he struck an elderly man outside a bar; the victim fell, hit his head, and died in hospital 15 days later. An Italian court classified that death as preterintentional homicide and found Arena incapable of understanding and willing his actions. He was sentenced to five years in a Rems — a residential facility for the execution of security measures, the successor to Italy's closed judicial psychiatric hospitals.

“For the 2017 crime he was given five years of Rems (the former judicial psychiatric hospitals) because he was deemed incapable of understanding and willing.”

The investigation

A prosecutor from the Monza Public Prosecutor's Office, led by Claudio Gittardi, travelled to the scene. The Milan Carabinieri Scientific Investigations Section and a forensic pathologist are working to reconstruct the full sequence of events and establish a possible motive. Arena was taken to hospital and remains at the disposal of the Monza prosecutor.

Broader questions

The case revives scrutiny of Italy's Rems system, which replaced the old Ospedali Psichiatrici Giudiziari in 2015. Arena's trajectory — a serious violent offence, a finding of total incapacity, a five-year Rems term, and now a second alleged killing — is likely to fuel debate about risk assessment and supervision of offenders deemed not criminally responsible.