Femicide in Faido, explosion in Leontica: not an isolated case, but a pattern among hobby hunters

On Thursday, 9 July 2026, a 56-year-old woman is found with a gunshot wound to the head on the grounds of a rehabilitation clinic in Faido, Ticino.

She dies shortly afterwards at the hospital in Bellinzona. The suspected perpetrator is her 59-year-old ex-husband, a well-known local entrepreneur from Leontica in the Blenio valley. A day later, on Friday evening, the hobby hunter blows up a house belonging to his brother in the village centre of Leontica. In the explosion several police officers are injured, one of them buried under the rubble. The perpetrator himself dies in the detonation. The Ticino police now assume that the explosion was a deliberate trap. The shots fired into the void were apparently intended to lure emergency personnel into the building.

The two deaths have shaken the Blenio valley and the whole of Ticino. For us at IG Wild beim Wild, this case is not a regrettable isolated incident. It joins a series of cases that we document in our section Crime & hunting, in which hobby hunters were in possession of weapon components or in which the combination of access to weapons and personal crisis led to acts of violence against people.

The cases we document do not exist in a vacuum: investigating authorities and courts in Switzerland are repeatedly confronted with offences in which armed hobby hunters and hunting equipment play a role, from poaching through to serious violent crimes.

Confirmed: the perpetrator was a hobby hunter

In a written enquiry to the RSI editorial team, based on the statements made by the Ticino criminal police at the press conference of 13 July 2026: the perpetrator was a hobby hunter («cacciatore»). RSI described this as «fatto accertato e confermato», an established and confirmed fact.

Also confirmed: the man was in legal possession of several firearms. When he shot his ex-wife outside the clinic, no one heard a bang, which is why the police assume that a silencer was used. According to RSI, the ballistic investigations have not yet been completed.

The decisive open question: where did the silencer come from?

This is precisely where the crux lies, which is significant beyond the individual case. Under Swiss weapons law, silencers are in principle prohibited. Exceptions can essentially be granted by cantons for certain authorisation categories, including persons holding a hunting licence.

When asked specifically whether the perpetrator held such a hunting-law exemption for the silencer, RSI (as of 14 July 2026) was unable to provide any confirmation. According to RSI, the following remain open:

• whether the weapon used near Faido was among the man's registered firearms,
• whether the possession of the silencer was legal or illegal,
• which authority would have granted any exemption and for what purpose,
• whether the «various firearms» formed, wholly or in part, a hunting arsenal.

The investigations by the Ticino public prosecutor, coordinated by public prosecutor Petra Canonica Alexakis, are ongoing.

No isolated case: two documented patterns

The case of Faido and Leontica does not stand in isolation. It touches on two patterns that we have already documented several times in our section Crime & Hunting:

First: hobby hunters and illegal silencers in Ticino. Only recently we reported on a Ticino hobby hunter who was convicted as a poacher, complete with a silencer, night vision device and illegal lure traps. The case of Faido is thus already the second documented Ticino case within a short period of time in which a hobby hunter is linked to a silencer – once as a convicted poacher, once as an alleged perpetrator of femicide. This raises the question of how consistently the cantonal control of hunting-law exemptions for silencers is actually carried out.

Second: violence by hobby hunters in personal crises. According to several Ticino media outlets, rumours circulated in the region suggesting that the perpetrator harboured resentment and fits of rage. Should this be confirmed, the case would fit yet another pattern we have documented: repeatedly we have examined cases in which hobby hunters in an end-stage situation killed people, resorting to their hunting weapons and their familiarity in dealing with lethal violence.

Why this concerns us

Under Swiss weapons legislation, access to silencers is in effect a privilege of certain permit categories, among them hobby hunters. The Faido case is a prime example of how this privileged legal position, combined with a fundamentally unproblematic portrayal of firearms ownership by hobby hunters, can in the worst case become a deadly danger to people, and repeatedly so, not as a regrettable isolated case.

Why pleasure in killing is not a harmless leisure motive

People who take pleasure in killing living beings and pay to do so display, from a psychological point of view, no normal leisure behaviour. This behaviour contradicts fundamental mechanisms of empathy, compassion and moral inhibition, as they are present in the great majority of psychologically healthy people. Psychologically it is a matter of deviant violent behaviour, even if it is politically or culturally tolerated.

Pleasure in killing is a classic characteristic of pleasure-based violence. The act of violence itself has a rewarding effect. Not the outcome, not the necessity, but the killing. This is not a marginal phenomenon, but is clearly described in the psychology of violence.

Anyone who experiences hobby hunting as a pleasure displays a psychologically problematic motivation for violence that is historically and structurally related to authoritarian and dehumanising ideologies.

We will stay on this case and will report as soon as the public prosecutor releases further information on the origin of the weapon.

In the view of IG Wild beim Wild, what is needed for hobby hunters annual medical-psychological aptitude assessments modelled on the Netherlands, as well as a binding upper age limit. The largest age group among hobby hunters today is 65+. In this group, age-related impairments such as declining eyesight, slowed reaction times, reduced concentration and cognitive deficits increase statistically and markedly. At the same time, accident analyses show that the number of serious hunting accidents involving injuries and fatalities rises significantly from middle age onwards.

The regular reports of hunting accidents, fatal misconduct and the misuse of hunting weapons highlight a structural problem. The private ownership and use of lethal firearms for leisure purposes largely evades continuous oversight. In the view of IG Wild beim Wild, this can no longer be justified. A practice based on voluntary killing while simultaneously generating considerable risks to humans and animals loses its social legitimacy.

Hobby hunting is also based on speciesism. Speciesism describes the systematic devaluation of non-human animals solely on the grounds of their species membership. It is comparable to racism or sexism and can be justified neither culturally nor ethically. Tradition is no substitute for moral scrutiny.

It is precisely in the field of hobby hunting that critical scrutiny is indispensable. Hardly any other field is so shaped by whitewashing narratives, half-truths and deliberate disinformation. Where violence is normalised, narratives often serve to justify it. Transparency, verifiable facts and an open public debate are therefore essential.