The trial continues in which Pietro Genovese is accused of escaping from house arrest. The director’s son, also present today (24 May) in the courtroom in Piazzale Clodio, continues to deny the charges. That January 16, 2021, when the police rang at his door, he did not answer because “he had fallen asleep”. He declared this today during the hearing in which his brother Matteo, the latter’s girlfriend, the doorman of the building and the police officer who rang his doorbell that day were also heard. Pietro Genovese, 24, was sentenced to five years and four months for the death of Gaia von Freymann and Camilla Romagnoli, both 16 years old, who were hit and killed on the evening of 22 December 2019 in Corso Francia in Rome, while they were crossing the road .
The reconstruction
That Saturday in January three years ago, the police had checked the young man’s presence in the house for the first time, at 3.55pm. The first check was successful. But when they returned two hours later, no one had answered the buzzer. The operators, as confirmed by one of them in the courtroom, had not only rang the bell outside the building where Genovese lives with his family: they had also gone up to the landing, pressing the button outside the front door. Even then, no response.
Genovese’s version
«I fell asleep without wanting to. I tried to be careful, knowing about the controls, but that day I collapsed. But I was in my room.” A room from which the sound of the doorbell would come muffled, as underlined by the lawyer defending the 25-year-old, Gianluca Tognozzi, and confirmed by the girlfriend of Matteo Genovese, Pietro’s brother. The witnesses present in the courtroom today were also shown a video recorded by the building’s surveillance cameras, which frames the entrance to the building. None of them recognized Pietro in any of those who entered and left the building in the examined time slot. The word “end” to the procedural matter will probably come during the next hearing, set for mid-June.
The bitter post from Gaia’s mother
Meanwhile Gabriella Saracino, Gaia von Freymann’s mother, entrusted all her pain to a post published on social media a few hours before Genovese spoke in court. «This is a photo from May 22, 2020. Us at mass for our girls and “him” having a party with friends. The neighbors call the police because of very loud music and noise!”. The reference is to some reports which, however, did not lead to proceedings. It is not the first time that Gabriella Saracino shares words full of pain for the story of her having taken her daughter away from her. «The poor boy has been living peacefully in London for a while now so no one there can recognize him and call him a “murderer” as happened in Rome!», she wrote last December.
