WORLD
Paparazzo 'who found fame when he snapped Brad Pitt with another woman' is found dead with a single execution-style bullet wound to his head in Rome
Baku, March 2 (AZERTAC). A leading paparazzo who has photographed many of the world's biggest celebrities has been shot dead in Rome.
Daniele Lo Presti was found with a single bullet in his head, prompting fears he had fallen victim to a Mafia-style execution.
The 42-year-old photographer was discovered lying face down in a pool of blood in the Testaccio district in the southwest of Rome on a cycling track where he regularly went jogging.
His body was apparently found by friends with whom he had previously arranged to go running. Stars who have been photographed by Lo Presti include Rihanna, Beyoncй and Scarlett Johansson. He also snapped designers Stefano Dolce and Domenico Gabbana on their yacht. But perhaps his biggest hit came when he snapped pictures in Malta of Brad Pitt with a female assistant, which were said to have angered the actor's fiancйe Angelina Jolie. An officer attached to the investigation said: 'He was killed with a single shot from a small calibre weapon.
'It could be he fell foul of a Mafia crime family or someone else who really didn't want their picture taken.'
A police spokesman added: 'Lo Presti was a well-known paparazzo photographer and his scoops embarrassed many people.
'We are not ruling out a connection between his work and his death, and we are looking through all his most recent assignments as well as phone and computer records.'
There is no suggestion that any of his celebrity subjects is in any way linked to his death.
Five years ago, Lo Presti was apparently attacked by arsonists who burned his car and threatened his family.
And just last month a colleague of his at photo agency LaPresse, Danilo Ceretti, died in a mysterious motorcycle crash.
The word 'paparazzi' originates from the 1960 film La Dolce Vita, directed by Federico Fellini. The film, starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg and Anouk Aimйe, is set in Rome during a period when obsession with celebrity was at a new all-time high in Italy.
All the famous actresses of the day, from Brigitte Bardot to Joan Crawford, would be spotted out and about in the city and pictured by a waiting mass of photographers. La Dolce Vita follows a struggling journalist's week in the glamorous Roman city and features a news photographer named Paparazzo, played by Walter Santesso. It is this character that helped coin the term 'paparazzi' for freelance photographers. Director Fellini is believed to have come up with the name for the character from an Italian dialect word 'papataceo' that describes the buzzing of a mosquito. In an interview with Time magazine, Fellini said: 'Paparazzo… suggests to me a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging.' But other accounts claim Fellini took the name from a character in the 1901 novel, By The Ionian Sea. The film La Dolce Vita - which translates as 'the sweet life' - also left another legacy, making the phrase synonymous around the world for 'living the good life' or 'high life'.