An Italian man invoked the film Gladiator when he hunted down and shot dead a driver who had killed his wife after jumping a red light, in a vendetta that has shocked Italy.

Fabio Di Lello gave himself up to police after using a 9mm pistol to shoot dead 22-year-old Italo D’Elisa, who was to face manslaughter charges after ploughing into Roberta Smargiassi, 33, on her moped last summer.

After allegedly shooting dead Mr D’Elisa outside a café in the town of Vasto in the Abruzzo region, the 34-year-old semi-professional footballer calmly went to a local cemetery and placed the alleged murder weapon on his wife’s grave.

His lawyers said he feared the Italian legal system, which is notoriously dysfunctional and slow, would fail to bring his wife’s alleged killer to justice.

On his Facebook profile he had posted an image of Russell Crowe in the role of Maximus Decimus Meridius, the Roman general who seeks vengeance after his family is murdered.

In one of the most famous quotes from the 2000 epic directed by Ridley Scott, Maximus tells the emperor Commodus that he is “Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife…and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.”