northern italy
Updated on 07/11/2023 16:03
An ambulance and the Germans’ car are on the street after the accident. © Vigili del fuoco/dpa
A woman from Lower Bavaria, in northern Italy, kills three people with her car. Investigators aren’t assuming intent – even though some aspects of the crash appear to be. The woman is being treated psychiatrically and cannot be interrogated. The criticisms come from her lawyer.
After the accident that killed three in the Dolomites of northern Italy, investigators assume that the German driver did not intentionally run over pedestrians. Prosecutor Paolo Luca assumes a kind of tantrum behind the wheel, as he said on Tuesday.
He wants to oppose “ill-thought-out and contrived reconstructions” of last week’s momentous collision. The woman’s lawyer, Giuseppe Triolo, also emphasized in an interview with the German Press Agency: “Currently there is no indication that it was intentional.”
Driver suppresses fatal accident
His client is in custody but receiving psychiatric treatment at a hospital in Venice since Sunday night. You completely suppressed last Thursday’s accident, he described. The 31-year-old man could not be questioned and, contrary to what the media reported on Monday, he had not yet testified before a detention judge. That should happen soon.
Triolo complained that the woman was prejudiced in public. “You don’t get justice by nailing a fragile person to the cross and slaughtering them like that,” he said by telephone. The public defender is also threatened on the internet.
The Lower Bavarian woman ran over a group of pedestrians with her car in the northern Italian town of Santo Stefano di Cadore, close to the Austrian border. A two-year-old boy, his father and grandmother died. The mother was injured in a clinic, the grandfather suffered a heart attack, according to reports.
Prosecutor assumes anger as cause
Prosecutor Luca informed at a press conference in the capital of the province of Belluno that there were elements of the accident that could lead to fraud. For example, there were no skid marks on the road, and the driver had good visibility on the straight road. Also, she appeared to be accelerating the car. However, he thinks it more likely that the German was in a state of rage, the reason for which remains unclear. That’s why she was distracted from the street.
In addition, the Bavarian woman was not on the phone or busy with her cell phone at the time of the accident, according to the examination of the device, according to Luca. Shortly after the accident, it was speculated that she was probably distracted by her cell phone.
Driver led a “nomadic life” for months
Investigators hope to obtain more information in the coming days from statements made by the woman and her family members. At the express request of the 31-year-old, they were initially not informed of what was happening on the day of the accident, but they may soon come to Italy. Prosecutor Luca said that, according to previous information, the woman left her hometown in October and had been traveling alone for months. “She slept, ate and lived in the car,” he said, speaking of a “nomadic life”. Food and clothing were found in the car.
Luca reported witness testimony that before the accident in Santo Stefano, the woman was filling bottles of water at a fountain next to the road, suddenly slammed all the car doors that were open, threw the bottles away and fled. “She looks like someone who can’t control her anger,” Luca said.
The prosecutor explained that in the case of homicide in traffic – a crime in Italy – a prison sentence of two to seven years per victim is possible. The maximum penalty for multiple deaths is 18 years – unless there are aggravating factors such as intent or double the speed limit. In the center of Santo Stefano, in the Dolomites, there is a speed limit of 50 km/h – the German car has been estimated at around 90 km/h. (dpa/delay)