Sandro L. was convinced that he had delivered his daughter as if she were in kindergarten. The conversations he had with his wife that day testify to this.
“Sandro, where is our son? Who took Stella?” – The mother’s voice sounds tense when she calls her husband. Arianna L. from Cecchignola, south of Rome, drove to the kindergarten on Wednesday afternoon to pick up her 11-month-old daughter, but the child was not there. Minutes later, the shock: Sandro L. had left little Stella in the car that morning and had gone to work. Seven hours later, when Arianna L. discovered her son in the car, he was dead.
Now the Italian police are reconstructing the case based on the parents’ telephone conversations on the day of the tragedy.
“Who kidnapped her?”
Arianna L. is in the nursery office, she is stressed: “Sandro, the teachers here tell me that Stella never arrived!” Her husband, a carabiniere himself, does not initially understand what his wife means. “But how? Who kidnapped her?”, he replies.
According to initial investigations, the 45-year-old father suffered total memory loss. As reported by “Corriere della Sera”, the couple had already called at noon as usual and talked about who would pick up Stella in the early afternoon. At this point, Sandro L. was absolutely certain that he had delivered the child to day care in the morning. His wife said, “Okay, I’ll pick her up and take her home.”
A day like any other
During his first interrogation by the Carabinieri, Sandro L. later testified: “I was absolutely convinced that I had left her in her crib, I don’t know what happened. I also thought that Stella was there when I was before I spoke to my wife at the time of lunch to arrange who would pick her up.”
The man couldn’t remember anything unusual happening. “It was a day like any other,” he said when asked by his colleagues. “We got up, got ready. I took our dog, then I put Stella in the stroller and we got in the car.”
Car stood in the sun at 29 degrees
The corpse’s autopsy was carried out at a forensic institute in Rome on Friday. Did the child fall asleep on the 20-minute ride to day care? The results will also show whether Stella’s cause of death was related to the high temperatures of around 29 degrees that prevailed on the day.
The investigation must also clarify whether Sandro L. went through a phase of great stress at work and whether the family car is equipped with the child seat alert system, mandatory in Italy since 2020. The father is being investigated for negligence of a smaller.
Rfi navigation account, time 20 minutes 10/06/2023, 17:18 | Act: 06/10/2023, 5:18 pm