Man guns down ex-wife, relatives and neighbors

CHIERI, Italy -- A gun collector shot and killed his ex-wife and six other relatives and neighbors Tuesday, then turned the gun on himself in the latest in a spate of small-town family slayings that have horrified Italians.

The killings occurred in two adjacent homes on a residential street in Chieri, a suburb of the northwestern industrial city of Turin, said Col. Filippo Ricciarelli of the carabinieri paramilitary police.

Italian news reports identified the assailant as Mauro Antonello, a 40-year-old construction worker, former security guard and gun collector who had an acrimonious breakup two years ago with his wife, Carla Bergamin.

Bergamin, 40, her mother, brother, sister-in-law, as well as two neighbors and a woman who worked in the Bergamin family textile factory were all shot and killed before Antonello took his own life, the reports said.

The couple's 7-year-old daughter was at school at the time of the slayings.